Quiz #7
1) Consider this thought experiment: You are a Poet, and although you cannot imagine it, you are always in a diorama. The diorama is inside a museum. The museum is located in a city. The city is in a 21st century country. The diorama changes according to the scheduling of exhibits: Savannah plains, Arctic ice, Rainforest verdure, Academic conference... Unaware of your placement, (for your reality has always been *here*) the limits of your Poetic world are obviously the limits of your diorama. Assuming this scenario, what is the spatial relationship of cutting-edge Theories of Space to your spatial predicament? Now close your eyes. Explain. This is a good question. If cutting-edge theories existed that weren't simply old metaphors distorted, then presumably it would be possible for the fly to find his way out of the fly-bottle. But that doesn't mean there would be a way to write about it.
2) Please think of professional wrestling: Are the sounds the wrestlers make (the grunts and yells and body-against-canvass sounds) to the hoaxed fight as theory is to poetry? Alas. If so, is architectural theory, when quoted by poets, a kind of theatrical scream of pain? If not, why not? Yes, but denying theory can also be a cry of pain.
3) Let's assume that Western accentual-syllabic prosodies are a kind of white stucco wall: a paradigm of a will to order, a thin layer of periodically bumped plaster that hides the real materiality of the wall so as to produce a simulacrum of ideality and cleanliness uncontaminated by the foul fullness of history. The conceit drawn here is full of holes. Deconstruct it. Rhythm fights the fear of chaos. But it is less a barrier than a patterned path through, like marching. There are times when it is necessary to march. But one cannot build a pleasure dome out of marchings.
4) Please consider Lenin. In 1920, in the midst of raging civil war, and shortly after a Social Revolutionary wounded him in an assassination attempt, he spoke before a Moscow conference of revolutionary architects, poets, and Constructivist artists, including Mayakovsky, Rodchenko, and Tatlin. It is dangerous, comrades, he said, to believe that Soviet art and architecture in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat can outstrip the present and model the future. It is rumored that many of the petit-bourgeois intellectuals in the audience snickered at the ironic obviousness of such a remark. Mayakovsky, drunk, opened his trousers and produced his flaccid penis, saying, with a dead-pan matter-of-factness, Look, it is a cloud. Christian Rakovsky, later to become a leader in Trotsky's Left Opposition, laughed, and so did Brik and Mandelstam and Lunarcharsky (the latter who, in democratic spirit, had chosen to sit among the artists). Stalin, sitting across the aisle, two rows back, inhaled, blew smoke, and took note. It is said that Lenin was unusually lethargic and hesitant in this speech, perhaps due to his recent gun wounds. Taking the above scenario as starting point, make up a relevant question relating to Poetic Architecture, and then answer it. Great anecdote. The question becomes, when regular prosody is mandated by law, will only outlaws write free verse?
Quiz #8
[This Quiz contains only one question. Therefore, your answer should be four times as long as usual.]
1) Derrida has said, in speaking of deconstructive architecture (Tschumi, Eiseman, Johnson, Steven Holl, COOP Himelblau, and others): "First of all, they do not only destroy, they construct, effectively, and they construct by putting this architecture into a relation with other spaces of writing: cinematographic, narrative (the most sophisticated forms of literary narration), finally experimentations with formal combinations... all of this is something other than a restoration of architectural purity, even though it is also a thinking of architecture as such, that is, architecture not simply in the service of an extrinsic end. So, I am now increasingly tempted to consider this architectural experience to be the most impressive deconstructive audacity and effectivity. Also the most difficult because it is not enough to talk about this architecture; one has to negociate the writing in stone or metal with the hardest and most resistant political, cultural, or economic powers... It is these architects who come up against the resistances, which are the most solid ones in some way, of the culture, the philosophy, the politics in which we live." Doesn't this quote suggest to you that as soon as Derrida leaves the ethereal sky of Continental philosophy and enters into discussion about matters concerning everyday technology, that he comes across as a banal blabbermouth? Yes, but--.
In any case, consider, because he has a point: As long as innovative poets do not bring the imagination solidly up against the category of Authorship, that hardest and most resistant of ideological powers in the cultural field, will they ever succeed in constructing a truly new poetic architecture? Answer and speculate, in Piranesian fashion, what a revolutionary Archi-texture might be.
I know what you're getting at, but at the same time, it privileges one orthodoxy over all the rest. The Book, the Page, the Act of Reading itself--these can be examined (not that we have to do away with them). And after we examine them, perhaps we will decide that we like them the way they are fine. But i think the result of such an examination will be the creation of new forms, rather than the abolition of the old. See what happened to painting after photography. Similarly, a new kind of appropriative-ironyless ironic writing--based on computer operations, advertizing, &c--is now being practiced on the internet, though we await the emergence of a true audience for it.
Friday, February 06, 2004
Quiz #5
1) Is the cultural space that forms the writing even as the writing ...attempts to probe its dimensions the space of a certain Flatland? No, it is the sound of a symphony being played on squirming live insect-instruments.
2) Can architectural acoustic theory...serve as an heuristic tool for imaging the institutional interpolations (not obvious ones like the Academy, but those at more inaudible frequencies) inhabiting the cultural structures of avant-garde poetry? If Yes, build a cardboard model of such a tool. If No, try to build one anyway. All prisons warp the spirit of those who are incarcerated there--most of all, those whose employment is keeping other people under guard. There is, of course, an underground economy to such places; & one can suppose, competing systems of exchange. A model of this might be envisioned as the three faceted solid (round, square, triangular) of psych-test fame.
3) The following question is two questions, really, so points are double (tripled if the two answers are seamlessly melded into one): a) What is a flutter echo? Provide one example from the current English Poet Laureate and another from one of Jack Spicer's translations of Federico Garcia Lorca. I don't get the joke. Are you going to laugh at me when i google for "English Poet Laureate" + "2004"...?b) Was Kurt Schwitter's Merzbau a visionary and mystical poetic text or a meaningless shrine to garbage, insanely imploding into an ever-more claustrophobic post modern space? Justify, being careful to note the possible irony in the question. Both. Irony is dead.
4) What is more relevant to avant-garde poetry's possible coextensiveness with architecture: The Brooklyn Bridge or the ruins of a university after a riot? Explain. The flutter echo. It goes & goes.
Quiz #6
1) Is it possible that the recent desire amongst innovative writers to build analogic skywalks into a discipline of power and social utility such as architecture may be impelled from below by a hidden structure of ideological tensions and undergirdings that parasitizes and eats from within, thus shaping, as it consumes, the very social space of avant-garde aesthetic practice? Answer yes or no, and then rewrite this question into a syntax that is less onerous. We play Russian roulette with blanks. The danger of this is that we cannot blow our brains out.
2) As partly evidenced by the November, 2000 Language/Poetry/Performance Conference in New Dehli, contemporary innovative poets have become influenced by recent architectural theory's critique of Total Design, a concept that has two meanings: a) the implosive, in which design takes over all interior space (Sullivan, Wright, Taut, the Vienna Secession, etc.) and b) the explosive, where architecture is destined and authorized to move outward beyond discrete structure to encompass all scales (the Harvard School of Design via Gropius, the Englis Designs and Industries Association, etc.). The former resists (in petit-bourgeois/aristocratic fashion) industrialization and mass culture; the latter (in futuristic/avant fashion) seeks to become its very spirit. (snip)Write an answer of at least 300 words drawing parallels between the Bauhaus as described by Wigley and Language poetry, with particular attention to the latter's accelerating absorption by the academic institution. Be rigorous in your answer and avoid servile timidity. You're being paid by the word, aren't you? L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing is hated the way Bauhaus is hated. But people's trademarked procedures aren't even widely recognized within the community--so the analogy fails. Really, there are not many useful analogies to be drawn between different artforms, especially ones so diametrically socialized as poetry & architecture. Poets are more like the people who build things by their own reckoning & violate code--which the city then hastens to
bulldoze.
3) Is the Anglo-American Modernist long poem explosive or implosive in its architectures...? (snip) Long poems don't have architecture anymore. They only have the accidental inflections of doggedness. You could remove every other line & improve the vast majority of them.
4) The architects who talk about chaos, absence, fragmentation, and indeterminacy usually work hard to assure that you know that a design is theirs by using signature shapes and colors. (snip) Branding is only the surface indicator of our deep folly. We seek to become poem-making machines, when it is obvious all our
efforts should be made toward freeing ourselves of the desire to write.After doing so, briefly discuss the meaning of the Signature and its role as limen within Poetry's institutional architecture. The work of machines is all that's allowed in the standardized shop.
1) Is the cultural space that forms the writing even as the writing ...attempts to probe its dimensions the space of a certain Flatland? No, it is the sound of a symphony being played on squirming live insect-instruments.
2) Can architectural acoustic theory...serve as an heuristic tool for imaging the institutional interpolations (not obvious ones like the Academy, but those at more inaudible frequencies) inhabiting the cultural structures of avant-garde poetry? If Yes, build a cardboard model of such a tool. If No, try to build one anyway. All prisons warp the spirit of those who are incarcerated there--most of all, those whose employment is keeping other people under guard. There is, of course, an underground economy to such places; & one can suppose, competing systems of exchange. A model of this might be envisioned as the three faceted solid (round, square, triangular) of psych-test fame.
3) The following question is two questions, really, so points are double (tripled if the two answers are seamlessly melded into one): a) What is a flutter echo? Provide one example from the current English Poet Laureate and another from one of Jack Spicer's translations of Federico Garcia Lorca. I don't get the joke. Are you going to laugh at me when i google for "English Poet Laureate" + "2004"...?b) Was Kurt Schwitter's Merzbau a visionary and mystical poetic text or a meaningless shrine to garbage, insanely imploding into an ever-more claustrophobic post modern space? Justify, being careful to note the possible irony in the question. Both. Irony is dead.
4) What is more relevant to avant-garde poetry's possible coextensiveness with architecture: The Brooklyn Bridge or the ruins of a university after a riot? Explain. The flutter echo. It goes & goes.
Quiz #6
1) Is it possible that the recent desire amongst innovative writers to build analogic skywalks into a discipline of power and social utility such as architecture may be impelled from below by a hidden structure of ideological tensions and undergirdings that parasitizes and eats from within, thus shaping, as it consumes, the very social space of avant-garde aesthetic practice? Answer yes or no, and then rewrite this question into a syntax that is less onerous. We play Russian roulette with blanks. The danger of this is that we cannot blow our brains out.
2) As partly evidenced by the November, 2000 Language/Poetry/Performance Conference in New Dehli, contemporary innovative poets have become influenced by recent architectural theory's critique of Total Design, a concept that has two meanings: a) the implosive, in which design takes over all interior space (Sullivan, Wright, Taut, the Vienna Secession, etc.) and b) the explosive, where architecture is destined and authorized to move outward beyond discrete structure to encompass all scales (the Harvard School of Design via Gropius, the Englis Designs and Industries Association, etc.). The former resists (in petit-bourgeois/aristocratic fashion) industrialization and mass culture; the latter (in futuristic/avant fashion) seeks to become its very spirit. (snip)Write an answer of at least 300 words drawing parallels between the Bauhaus as described by Wigley and Language poetry, with particular attention to the latter's accelerating absorption by the academic institution. Be rigorous in your answer and avoid servile timidity. You're being paid by the word, aren't you? L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing is hated the way Bauhaus is hated. But people's trademarked procedures aren't even widely recognized within the community--so the analogy fails. Really, there are not many useful analogies to be drawn between different artforms, especially ones so diametrically socialized as poetry & architecture. Poets are more like the people who build things by their own reckoning & violate code--which the city then hastens to
bulldoze.
3) Is the Anglo-American Modernist long poem explosive or implosive in its architectures...? (snip) Long poems don't have architecture anymore. They only have the accidental inflections of doggedness. You could remove every other line & improve the vast majority of them.
4) The architects who talk about chaos, absence, fragmentation, and indeterminacy usually work hard to assure that you know that a design is theirs by using signature shapes and colors. (snip) Branding is only the surface indicator of our deep folly. We seek to become poem-making machines, when it is obvious all our
efforts should be made toward freeing ourselves of the desire to write.After doing so, briefly discuss the meaning of the Signature and its role as limen within Poetry's institutional architecture. The work of machines is all that's allowed in the standardized shop.
Quiz #3
1) In poetry, what is an arch? A shape that half-encloses space. Explain and draw a model. See "Un Coup de Des".
2) Take Le Corbusier's somewhat forgotten Savoie house as analogy: Can the body of a poem be hollowed out in every direction (snip)...? Only if it is composed of ambiguous words.
3) Is it possible, in a move of boldest conceptual elan, to build a poem over a waterfall? "Lycidas". Confirm or deny, then, if the former, say what you would title such a poem. "Perpetual Motion".
4) Is the incipient turn of new poetries to architectural/spatial theory symptomatic, in any way, of the generalized crisis of the current poetic avant-garde? Insert a compass as metaphor (or metonym, if you desire) in your answer. The wind from the sound of no hands clapping, perturbing the gargoyle-weathervane of the Muses which the Sufi fool takes for a compass pointing at Eternal Truth.
Quiz #4
1) Take Michael Riffaterre's book Semiotics of Poetry, where he argues (as described by the American poet-bridge builder Henry Gould) that the poetic involves a dialectic between mimesis or representation, on the one hand (which creates what Riffaterre calls meaning), and significance, on the other. The architecture game of poetry, then, would seem to involve deciphering a significance that is always deferred by the parabolic indirections of transforming meaningful observation into architectonic
structure. Does this suggest that a poem --the kind that is written on a two-dimensional page-- is necessarily and merely a kind of deceptive *faciatta* through whose apertures an interior content is fleetingly and deceptively glimpsed against what is, in the most material sense, a swarming particle space? Answer yes or no via a parable in the style of Plato. There once was a boy who believed
in the promises of Poetry. He ran away from home & tried to make himself into a Poet. He failed & became a gun-runner, but he changed Poetry forever.
2) If a metaphor is a balcony, is the view it affords measurable in terms of a paraboloidal function (for example: x2/a2+y2/b2 = 2cz [where a, b, and c are constants]), or is that just gibberish? Justify. Its view is not a parabola but a hyperbola. If it had been a parabola, we would not still be arguing about it.
3) What is an Author? Is she an Architect? Think hard. The Author is a figment of the poem's imagination, as is proven by the existence of so many misconceptions about dead authors which are inspired by fanciful people reading their works. Where she builds, where she makes her nest, is in the Future.
4) Can a security alarm system be built into a poem? There's one in "The Waste Land". Name it. Ezra Pound.
1) In poetry, what is an arch? A shape that half-encloses space. Explain and draw a model. See "Un Coup de Des".
2) Take Le Corbusier's somewhat forgotten Savoie house as analogy: Can the body of a poem be hollowed out in every direction (snip)...? Only if it is composed of ambiguous words.
3) Is it possible, in a move of boldest conceptual elan, to build a poem over a waterfall? "Lycidas". Confirm or deny, then, if the former, say what you would title such a poem. "Perpetual Motion".
4) Is the incipient turn of new poetries to architectural/spatial theory symptomatic, in any way, of the generalized crisis of the current poetic avant-garde? Insert a compass as metaphor (or metonym, if you desire) in your answer. The wind from the sound of no hands clapping, perturbing the gargoyle-weathervane of the Muses which the Sufi fool takes for a compass pointing at Eternal Truth.
Quiz #4
1) Take Michael Riffaterre's book Semiotics of Poetry, where he argues (as described by the American poet-bridge builder Henry Gould) that the poetic involves a dialectic between mimesis or representation, on the one hand (which creates what Riffaterre calls meaning), and significance, on the other. The architecture game of poetry, then, would seem to involve deciphering a significance that is always deferred by the parabolic indirections of transforming meaningful observation into architectonic
structure. Does this suggest that a poem --the kind that is written on a two-dimensional page-- is necessarily and merely a kind of deceptive *faciatta* through whose apertures an interior content is fleetingly and deceptively glimpsed against what is, in the most material sense, a swarming particle space? Answer yes or no via a parable in the style of Plato. There once was a boy who believed
in the promises of Poetry. He ran away from home & tried to make himself into a Poet. He failed & became a gun-runner, but he changed Poetry forever.
2) If a metaphor is a balcony, is the view it affords measurable in terms of a paraboloidal function (for example: x2/a2+y2/b2 = 2cz [where a, b, and c are constants]), or is that just gibberish? Justify. Its view is not a parabola but a hyperbola. If it had been a parabola, we would not still be arguing about it.
3) What is an Author? Is she an Architect? Think hard. The Author is a figment of the poem's imagination, as is proven by the existence of so many misconceptions about dead authors which are inspired by fanciful people reading their works. Where she builds, where she makes her nest, is in the Future.
4) Can a security alarm system be built into a poem? There's one in "The Waste Land". Name it. Ezra Pound.
I take Kent's quiz.
Quiz #1
1) Can a poem have a blueprint? Yes, but it always goes astray.
2) Does a door connect the inside and outside? A poem is a Moebius Strip. It doesn't have an inside & an outside.
3) What kind of door should it be: swinging or sliding? It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
4) Is there plumbing and where does it go? Only grad students need to worry (--& they should).
Quiz #2
1) Is a dactyl a brick or a gargoyle? A gargoyle is a kind of brick. A dactyl is just a figment of a grammarian's imagination. Justify. See "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird".
2) What is the relationship of engineering to poetic architecture? When a bridge falls down, people sometimes die. When a poem falls down, the poet sometimes wins prizes. Is the architect-poet responsible for designing a structure that can actually be built? In his dreams. If so, why? Denial is a way of life.
3) Can concepts of architectural acoustics (reflection, diffusion, diffraction of waves) be applied to poetry...? (snip) Perhaps concepts of an imaginary physics--analogous to occult anatomy--which are what "aesthetics" & "poetics" prefigure, might be. But so far, mostly what we have is imitation. Whether yes or no, explain. Poems are writ by fools like me, but only the anonymous scop of "Beowulf" can make a tree.
5) Are words in a poem a) rooms b) furniture c) walls d) vestibules e) windows f) corridors g) other? Are the organs of your body separate, except in the functional sense? Explain. Change one letter, & it's a different poem.
Quiz #1
1) Can a poem have a blueprint? Yes, but it always goes astray.
2) Does a door connect the inside and outside? A poem is a Moebius Strip. It doesn't have an inside & an outside.
3) What kind of door should it be: swinging or sliding? It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
4) Is there plumbing and where does it go? Only grad students need to worry (--& they should).
Quiz #2
1) Is a dactyl a brick or a gargoyle? A gargoyle is a kind of brick. A dactyl is just a figment of a grammarian's imagination. Justify. See "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird".
2) What is the relationship of engineering to poetic architecture? When a bridge falls down, people sometimes die. When a poem falls down, the poet sometimes wins prizes. Is the architect-poet responsible for designing a structure that can actually be built? In his dreams. If so, why? Denial is a way of life.
3) Can concepts of architectural acoustics (reflection, diffusion, diffraction of waves) be applied to poetry...? (snip) Perhaps concepts of an imaginary physics--analogous to occult anatomy--which are what "aesthetics" & "poetics" prefigure, might be. But so far, mostly what we have is imitation. Whether yes or no, explain. Poems are writ by fools like me, but only the anonymous scop of "Beowulf" can make a tree.
5) Are words in a poem a) rooms b) furniture c) walls d) vestibules e) windows f) corridors g) other? Are the organs of your body separate, except in the functional sense? Explain. Change one letter, & it's a different poem.
"No statue has been erected in memory of the martyrs of Chicago in the city of Chicago. Not a statue, not a monolith, not a bronze plaque. Nothing." --Eduardo Galeano (via Wood_s Lot)
"Golgotha Is a Mountain
Golgotha is a mountain, a purple mound
Almost out of sight.
One night they hanged two thieves there,
And another man.
Some women wept heavily that night;
Their tears are flowing still. They have made a river;
Once it covered me.
Then the people went away and left Golgotha
Deserted.
Oh, I've seen many mountains:
Pale purple mountains melting in the evening mists and blurring on the borders of the sky.
I climbed old Shasta and chilled my hands in its summer snows.
I rested in the shadow of Popocatepetl and it whispered to me of daring prowess.
I looked upon the Pyrenees and felt the zest of warm exotic nights.
I slept at the foot of Fujiyama and dreamed of legend and of death.
And I've seen other mountains rising from the wistful moors like the breasts of a slender maiden.
Who knows the mystery of mountains!
Some of them are awful, others are just lonely.
* * *
Italy has its Rome and California has San Francisco,
All covered with mountains.
Some think these mountains grew
Like ant hills
Or sand dunes.
That might be so--
I wonder what started them all!
Babylon is a mountain
And so is Nineveh,
With grass growing on them;
Palaces and hanging gardens started them.
I wonder what is under the hills
In Mexico
And Japan!
There are mountains in Africa, too.
Treasure is buried there:
Gold and precious stones
And moulded glory.
Lush grass is growing there
Sinking before the wind.
Black men are bowing
Naked in that grass
Digging with their fingers.
I am one of them:
Those mountains should be ours.
It would be great
To touch the pieces of glory with our hands.
These mute unhappy hills,
Bowed down with broken backs,
Speak often one to another:
"A day is as a year," they cry,
"And a thousand years as one day."
We watched the caravan
That bore our queen to the courts of Solomon;
And when the first slave traders came
We bowed our heads.
"Oh, Brothers, it is not long!
Dust shall yet devour the stones
But we shall be here when they are one."
Mountains are rising all around me.
Some are so small they are not seen;
Others are large.
All of them get big in time and people forget
What started them at first.
Oh the world is covered with mountains!
Beneath each one there is something buried:
Some pile of wreckage that started it there.
Mountains are lonely and some are awful.
* * *
One day I will crumble.
They'll cover my heap with dirt and that will make a mountain.
I think it will be Golgotha."
--Arna Bontemps, in: American Negro Poetry (1963)
Golgotha is a mountain, a purple mound
Almost out of sight.
One night they hanged two thieves there,
And another man.
Some women wept heavily that night;
Their tears are flowing still. They have made a river;
Once it covered me.
Then the people went away and left Golgotha
Deserted.
Oh, I've seen many mountains:
Pale purple mountains melting in the evening mists and blurring on the borders of the sky.
I climbed old Shasta and chilled my hands in its summer snows.
I rested in the shadow of Popocatepetl and it whispered to me of daring prowess.
I looked upon the Pyrenees and felt the zest of warm exotic nights.
I slept at the foot of Fujiyama and dreamed of legend and of death.
And I've seen other mountains rising from the wistful moors like the breasts of a slender maiden.
Who knows the mystery of mountains!
Some of them are awful, others are just lonely.
* * *
Italy has its Rome and California has San Francisco,
All covered with mountains.
Some think these mountains grew
Like ant hills
Or sand dunes.
That might be so--
I wonder what started them all!
Babylon is a mountain
And so is Nineveh,
With grass growing on them;
Palaces and hanging gardens started them.
I wonder what is under the hills
In Mexico
And Japan!
There are mountains in Africa, too.
Treasure is buried there:
Gold and precious stones
And moulded glory.
Lush grass is growing there
Sinking before the wind.
Black men are bowing
Naked in that grass
Digging with their fingers.
I am one of them:
Those mountains should be ours.
It would be great
To touch the pieces of glory with our hands.
These mute unhappy hills,
Bowed down with broken backs,
Speak often one to another:
"A day is as a year," they cry,
"And a thousand years as one day."
We watched the caravan
That bore our queen to the courts of Solomon;
And when the first slave traders came
We bowed our heads.
"Oh, Brothers, it is not long!
Dust shall yet devour the stones
But we shall be here when they are one."
Mountains are rising all around me.
Some are so small they are not seen;
Others are large.
All of them get big in time and people forget
What started them at first.
Oh the world is covered with mountains!
Beneath each one there is something buried:
Some pile of wreckage that started it there.
Mountains are lonely and some are awful.
* * *
One day I will crumble.
They'll cover my heap with dirt and that will make a mountain.
I think it will be Golgotha."
--Arna Bontemps, in: American Negro Poetry (1963)
"In his mind Walcott went back over the wars that history had recorded: 2850, Mars v. Venus; 2817, Mars v. Earth; 2780, Earth v. Venus; 2612, Earth and Mars v. Venus; 2590, Mars and Venus v. Earth, 2471, attack from outside the system by weird things called Luarkas..." --Orbit One by "Mel Jay" (Lionel Fanthorpe), 1966
There is a crisis there is not a crisis. I yell at somebody that's the crisis showing through. But when i consider my options i realize the best thing is not to think about it unless i have to. This is called Doublethink, or "normalcy". With it i can survive anything, even Dubya's fascist state.
01 28 04
The architect as paradigm artist-- because it's closest in form to a science-- this means stale notions framed with the utmost clarity, so you wonder why it happened at all-- and that feeling, repeated, becomes the expected response to any art...
To admit that you no longer love what you once loved is hard, because that means admitting part of you has died. It implies that eventually, there will be no one to love what you used to love, that you will finally vanish from the earth (not merely from your life); and that thought is not pleasant to a person who defines self by external riteria: like the Sun King who tried to forbid anyone mentioning the mortality of monarchs in his presence. In order to grow, you must accept your death, for you are not a thing but a nexus of processes, some of which metamorphosize into others, some going out, some coming into existence. The more you understand this, as form-genesis or as real-time, the less impeded by inner blockings will be your growth. And that means discarding much, as well as acquiring much-- in order to create a past for yourself, and a future, out of the vortex of the present where nothing can abide.
Death is a thought of adolescence, of the first dying-over...And the uman race, which even now consists mainly of children and teenagers, has always been obsesed ith that thought, in spite of words from the few whose minds continued past that point.
But now our dreams have become our reality--.
"January 29, 2004
To whom it may concern:
During our 9 week unit on hate, we are learning about the Holocaustand
how
prejudice and power in the wrong hands can be catastrophic. We have a
project that we would like your help on.Northridge Middle School is a
small
rural school located in central Ohio. Our student body consists of
about
400 students who are mostly Christian with very little cultural
diversity.
We will be traveling to Washington D.C. in May and will be experiencing
all
the sights of our wonderful capital. One of our stops will be at the
Holocaust Museum. By that time, we will have completed a comprehensive
unit
about the Holocaust. Even though we know that 6,000,000 Jews were
murdered
in the Holocaust, it is hard to fathom such a huge number. As part of
our
research, we came across a class project conducted by a middle school
in
Whitwell, TN. We were inspired by their efforts to collect paper-clips
as
symbols of those who lost their lives during that terrible time. We
have
decided to start a paper-clip drive of our own. Our ultimate goal is to
collect 6,000,000 paper-clips to represent 6,000,000 victims of the
Holocaust. We are asking for paper-clip donations for a particular
reason.
During World War II, Norwegians wore paper-clips on their clothes to
show their opposition to Nazism and anti-Semitism. Once our project is
completed, our class intends to use the paper-clips to build a
sculpture
with the help of our talented art teacher. This project will be
displayed
in our school. Our sculpture will stand as a lasting reminder of those
who
gave so much. Our project will continue until March 5, 2004. At this
time,
we will decide if the project will need to be extended. It is not
important
to us how many paper-clips each person wants to send. We'll leave that
decision up to you. The paper-clips should be sent to:
Northridge Middle School
Holocaust Project
ATTN: T. Bowman/A. Thompson
6066 Johnstown-Utica Rd.
Johnstown, OH 43031
From tracking the states from which the paper-clips were sent to
counting
and organizing the load, everyone in our class will have a hand in
making
this project a success. Thank you in advance for sending us
paper-clips!
Sincerely,
Ms. Bowman's 8th grade English Class"
"An Old Pagan Talks About Love"
dazzling, and
if you bury
the WORLD, and deep/
The rage of
It thousand I
have a A
whole calls into
the gravity wars nacreous
Mad goblin, meteorogram
words, indigo shade
we have to train and continents,
in
the
silence of
the far away, in front
his desire to
become a result of
pyrotechnicians nibbled him as
02 06 04
01 28 04
The architect as paradigm artist-- because it's closest in form to a science-- this means stale notions framed with the utmost clarity, so you wonder why it happened at all-- and that feeling, repeated, becomes the expected response to any art...
To admit that you no longer love what you once loved is hard, because that means admitting part of you has died. It implies that eventually, there will be no one to love what you used to love, that you will finally vanish from the earth (not merely from your life); and that thought is not pleasant to a person who defines self by external riteria: like the Sun King who tried to forbid anyone mentioning the mortality of monarchs in his presence. In order to grow, you must accept your death, for you are not a thing but a nexus of processes, some of which metamorphosize into others, some going out, some coming into existence. The more you understand this, as form-genesis or as real-time, the less impeded by inner blockings will be your growth. And that means discarding much, as well as acquiring much-- in order to create a past for yourself, and a future, out of the vortex of the present where nothing can abide.
Death is a thought of adolescence, of the first dying-over...And the uman race, which even now consists mainly of children and teenagers, has always been obsesed ith that thought, in spite of words from the few whose minds continued past that point.
But now our dreams have become our reality--.
"January 29, 2004
To whom it may concern:
During our 9 week unit on hate, we are learning about the Holocaustand
how
prejudice and power in the wrong hands can be catastrophic. We have a
project that we would like your help on.Northridge Middle School is a
small
rural school located in central Ohio. Our student body consists of
about
400 students who are mostly Christian with very little cultural
diversity.
We will be traveling to Washington D.C. in May and will be experiencing
all
the sights of our wonderful capital. One of our stops will be at the
Holocaust Museum. By that time, we will have completed a comprehensive
unit
about the Holocaust. Even though we know that 6,000,000 Jews were
murdered
in the Holocaust, it is hard to fathom such a huge number. As part of
our
research, we came across a class project conducted by a middle school
in
Whitwell, TN. We were inspired by their efforts to collect paper-clips
as
symbols of those who lost their lives during that terrible time. We
have
decided to start a paper-clip drive of our own. Our ultimate goal is to
collect 6,000,000 paper-clips to represent 6,000,000 victims of the
Holocaust. We are asking for paper-clip donations for a particular
reason.
During World War II, Norwegians wore paper-clips on their clothes to
show their opposition to Nazism and anti-Semitism. Once our project is
completed, our class intends to use the paper-clips to build a
sculpture
with the help of our talented art teacher. This project will be
displayed
in our school. Our sculpture will stand as a lasting reminder of those
who
gave so much. Our project will continue until March 5, 2004. At this
time,
we will decide if the project will need to be extended. It is not
important
to us how many paper-clips each person wants to send. We'll leave that
decision up to you. The paper-clips should be sent to:
Northridge Middle School
Holocaust Project
ATTN: T. Bowman/A. Thompson
6066 Johnstown-Utica Rd.
Johnstown, OH 43031
From tracking the states from which the paper-clips were sent to
counting
and organizing the load, everyone in our class will have a hand in
making
this project a success. Thank you in advance for sending us
paper-clips!
Sincerely,
Ms. Bowman's 8th grade English Class"
"An Old Pagan Talks About Love"
dazzling, and
if you bury
the WORLD, and deep/
The rage of
It thousand I
have a A
whole calls into
the gravity wars nacreous
Mad goblin, meteorogram
words, indigo shade
we have to train and continents,
in
the
silence of
the far away, in front
his desire to
become a result of
pyrotechnicians nibbled him as
02 06 04
Thursday, February 05, 2004
A new McGonagall. (via Poetry Hut)
[So where's the poem? --Pay per view, i guess.]
Winner Talk.
Proposed feng shui building code. (via A Perfectly Cromulent Blog)
[So where's the poem? --Pay per view, i guess.]
Winner Talk.
Proposed feng shui building code. (via A Perfectly Cromulent Blog)
This is hilarious: Dreamthorp, which i have by the Spasmodic poet Alexander Smith--is also a horror novel by Chet Williamson.
I think the horror genre will make a comeback.
I find one, Domain by James Herbert, that's an After-the-Bomb story where the last humans fight rats for world supremacy. Maybe it's time i wrote mine, about the war between the Rats & the Roaches...?
I think the horror genre will make a comeback.
I find one, Domain by James Herbert, that's an After-the-Bomb story where the last humans fight rats for world supremacy. Maybe it's time i wrote mine, about the war between the Rats & the Roaches...?
Listening to- Big Fun.
[It is more & more becoming clear to me that Miles Davis is one of the great artists of the Twentieth Century.]
[It is more & more becoming clear to me that Miles Davis is one of the great artists of the Twentieth Century.]
My mother had a flat at the groc. A man offered to fix it. She gave him some money & drove to a tire store, where they told her it was a racket: they slash your tires & if you're elderly you're glad to pay them. Of course there's no security. Not in that neighborhood.
01 24/28 04
Why there are always more artists than anyone suspects. --The glow of the workroom dazzles; crowd posits a demiurge within. The only thing known about the gods is their name, that is, their aspert to mortals. So. The names of gods must be few, and their aspects simple, else it's no pantheon but an encyclopedia: and crowd forgets all! Some like it that way. But the ones that don't, don't either want to admit one new god to the pantheon. Because they already learned it one way. It's tidy and they're happy to keep the shelves dusted. For the shelf-dusters there are no demiurges or else so long gone they might as well hadn't been...
Well, artists are people and people come in more names and aspects than any encyclopedia could ever hold. If you love artists you should say: Every one is a new eye in the world! Another relevation! We are that much closer to the dawn! ...but don't you sart loving Art more than artists, 'cause then it's the fewer the better, you want to save Art from all the artists......
Yes, and i would love the bad artists most; the better ones don't need it. Those who can'tor won't see straight, heir crookedness is part of world-texture. When i have my attacksof purism, it's really my own betrayals i am bemoaning and seeking to castigate. But how could i save art from the artist who is myself?
More from Stanyhurst's Aeneid:
"Wee leaue Creete country; and our sayls vnwrapped vphoysing,
With woodden vessel thee rough seas deepelye we furrowe.
When we fro land harbours too mayne seas gyddye dyd enter
Voyded of al coast sight with wild fluds roundly bebayed,
A watrye clowd gloomming, ful aboue mee clampred, apeered,
A sharp storme menacing, from sight beams soonnye reiecting:
Thee flaws with rumbling, thee wroght fluds angrye doe iumble:
Vp swel thee surges, in chauffe sea plasshye we tumble:
With the rayn, is daylight through darcknesse mostye bewrapped,
And thundring lightbolts from torneclowds fyrye be flasshing."
01 24/28 04
Why there are always more artists than anyone suspects. --The glow of the workroom dazzles; crowd posits a demiurge within. The only thing known about the gods is their name, that is, their aspert to mortals. So. The names of gods must be few, and their aspects simple, else it's no pantheon but an encyclopedia: and crowd forgets all! Some like it that way. But the ones that don't, don't either want to admit one new god to the pantheon. Because they already learned it one way. It's tidy and they're happy to keep the shelves dusted. For the shelf-dusters there are no demiurges or else so long gone they might as well hadn't been...
Well, artists are people and people come in more names and aspects than any encyclopedia could ever hold. If you love artists you should say: Every one is a new eye in the world! Another relevation! We are that much closer to the dawn! ...but don't you sart loving Art more than artists, 'cause then it's the fewer the better, you want to save Art from all the artists......
Yes, and i would love the bad artists most; the better ones don't need it. Those who can'tor won't see straight, heir crookedness is part of world-texture. When i have my attacksof purism, it's really my own betrayals i am bemoaning and seeking to castigate. But how could i save art from the artist who is myself?
More from Stanyhurst's Aeneid:
"Wee leaue Creete country; and our sayls vnwrapped vphoysing,
With woodden vessel thee rough seas deepelye we furrowe.
When we fro land harbours too mayne seas gyddye dyd enter
Voyded of al coast sight with wild fluds roundly bebayed,
A watrye clowd gloomming, ful aboue mee clampred, apeered,
A sharp storme menacing, from sight beams soonnye reiecting:
Thee flaws with rumbling, thee wroght fluds angrye doe iumble:
Vp swel thee surges, in chauffe sea plasshye we tumble:
With the rayn, is daylight through darcknesse mostye bewrapped,
And thundring lightbolts from torneclowds fyrye be flasshing."
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
New book by the author of Alphabetical Africa. (via The Literary Saloon)
Vollman considers violence in 7 volumes. (via Mosses from an Old Manse)
The Moment Project. (via Open Brackets)
Vollman considers violence in 7 volumes. (via Mosses from an Old Manse)
The Moment Project. (via Open Brackets)
"...you -- the readers, the slicers, dicers and copiers -- hold in your collective action the secret of the future of publishing. Writers are a dime a dozen. Everybody's got a novel in her or him. Readers are a precious commodity. You've got all the money and all the attention and you run the word-of-mouth network that marks the difference between a little book, soon forgotten, and a book that becomes a lasting piece of posterity for its author, changing the world in some meaningful way." --Cory Doctorow
"On Mars Yet Again"
Melanie saw a movie about the star of a fictitious reality TV show; this has inspired me to return to my screenplay about Philip K Dick struggling to complete his novelization of Blade Runner--in that alternate universe where he didn't turn down the job-- (NOT!). --But i was considering a satire on Richard Perle...
01 28 04
I never sit down to write as if it were going to be destroyed immediately, and yet this is so.
"Looking at the moon all col and wite and oansome, Lorna said to me, 'You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name.' I said, 'What thing is that?' She said, 'Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.' I said 'If its in every 1 of us theres moren 1 of it theres got to be a manying theres got to be a millying and mor.' Lorna said, 'Wel there is a millying and mor.' I said, 'Wel if theres such a manying of it whys it lorn then whys it loan?' She said, 'Becaws the manying and the millying its all 1 thing it dont have nothing to gether with. You look at lykens on a stoan its all them tiny manyings of it and may be each part of it myt think its sepert only we can see its all 1 thing. Thats how it is with what we are its all 1 girt big thing and divvyt up amongst the many. Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and oansome. Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and its tears us a part. I dont think I took all that much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatis it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feel how its tiret of me and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tell you some thing Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.' I said, 'Lorna I dont know what you mean.' She said, 'We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun we dint begin where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I dont know what we are to it. May be weare jus only sickness and a feaver to it or boyls on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen what Im going to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us. It dont think the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart.' I said, 'Whats it afeart of?' She said, 'Its afeart of being beartht.' 'How can that be? You said it ben here befor us. If it ben here all this time it musve ben beartht some time.' She said, 'No it aint ben beartht it never does get beartht its all ways in the woom of things its all ways on the road.' I said, 'All this what you jus ben telling be that a tel for me?' She larft then she said, 'Riddley there aint nothing what aint a tel for you...' --Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)
"To Anvil Eden"
Stealing perfume from a mole
Flying meta- hackers depleted
Uranium poem; blind man in a room full
Of deaf people bemd
Ink harl want.
Meteorogram
Dim battlebots. Mutiny,
Thy bookish onus should have fallen:
Ascendency we Belknap at any price
--Blackened pit/
The master race at Christmas,
The color of madness we down rain
Pull metallic apple pierce green, matte black, &
Chrome burnt shell...
Lurch the otherwise
Unremarkable incoherent weak streak
Finishes presto diametric
--The decibel ice
Wire transfer a rain place for
The rage of
It thousand
Eyes gone what will then happen
High on ev'ry show?
02 03 04
Melanie saw a movie about the star of a fictitious reality TV show; this has inspired me to return to my screenplay about Philip K Dick struggling to complete his novelization of Blade Runner--in that alternate universe where he didn't turn down the job-- (NOT!). --But i was considering a satire on Richard Perle...
01 28 04
I never sit down to write as if it were going to be destroyed immediately, and yet this is so.
"Looking at the moon all col and wite and oansome, Lorna said to me, 'You know Riddley theres some thing in us it dont have no name.' I said, 'What thing is that?' She said, 'Its some kynd of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it dont even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.' I said 'If its in every 1 of us theres moren 1 of it theres got to be a manying theres got to be a millying and mor.' Lorna said, 'Wel there is a millying and mor.' I said, 'Wel if theres such a manying of it whys it lorn then whys it loan?' She said, 'Becaws the manying and the millying its all 1 thing it dont have nothing to gether with. You look at lykens on a stoan its all them tiny manyings of it and may be each part of it myt think its sepert only we can see its all 1 thing. Thats how it is with what we are its all 1 girt big thing and divvyt up amongst the many. Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and oansome. Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and its tears us a part. I dont think I took all that much noatis of it when I ben yung. Now Im old I noatis it mor. It dont realy like to put me on no mor. Every morning I can feel how its tiret of me and readying to throw me a way. Iwl tell you some thing Riddley and keap this in memberment. What ever it is we dont come naturel to it.' I said, 'Lorna I dont know what you mean.' She said, 'We aint a naturel part of it. We dint begin when it begun we dint begin where it begun. It ben here befor us nor I dont know what we are to it. May be weare jus only sickness and a feaver to it or boyls on the arse of it I dont know. Now lissen what Im going to tel you Riddley. It thinks us but it dont think like us. It dont think the way we think. Plus like I said befor its afeart.' I said, 'Whats it afeart of?' She said, 'Its afeart of being beartht.' 'How can that be? You said it ben here befor us. If it ben here all this time it musve ben beartht some time.' She said, 'No it aint ben beartht it never does get beartht its all ways in the woom of things its all ways on the road.' I said, 'All this what you jus ben telling be that a tel for me?' She larft then she said, 'Riddley there aint nothing what aint a tel for you...' --Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)
"To Anvil Eden"
Stealing perfume from a mole
Flying meta- hackers depleted
Uranium poem; blind man in a room full
Of deaf people bemd
Ink harl want.
Meteorogram
Dim battlebots. Mutiny,
Thy bookish onus should have fallen:
Ascendency we Belknap at any price
--Blackened pit/
The master race at Christmas,
The color of madness we down rain
Pull metallic apple pierce green, matte black, &
Chrome burnt shell...
Lurch the otherwise
Unremarkable incoherent weak streak
Finishes presto diametric
--The decibel ice
Wire transfer a rain place for
The rage of
It thousand
Eyes gone what will then happen
High on ev'ry show?
02 03 04
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
"Plagiaristic Epiphany"
I was reading The Pirate, when i had an epiphany: i recognized a passage (p. 150 of the first edition) as those exact words i had just been listening to Kathy Acker read on cassette--i am listening to my old tapes during my commutes (since i now have a car that will play them)--
01 28 04
...Only a fanatic would try to fight banality with profundity...
My Place in the Riot (3). An amateur in a simultaneous exhibition against a grandmaster. I don't know how i'm going to lose only that i will. Yet i continue to cherish, in the face of this annihilation, some wild intuition or hallucination that there's a chance to win, based on my very insignificance...that i'll be underestimated & survive by a trick...the religion of all mice, maybe. So what does it enable them to do? Keep rom dying out completely, i suppose. And the art-impulse now, is it a time for hiding or for witnessing on streetcorners?
Neither trick has worked so far.
I was reading The Pirate, when i had an epiphany: i recognized a passage (p. 150 of the first edition) as those exact words i had just been listening to Kathy Acker read on cassette--i am listening to my old tapes during my commutes (since i now have a car that will play them)--
01 28 04
...Only a fanatic would try to fight banality with profundity...
My Place in the Riot (3). An amateur in a simultaneous exhibition against a grandmaster. I don't know how i'm going to lose only that i will. Yet i continue to cherish, in the face of this annihilation, some wild intuition or hallucination that there's a chance to win, based on my very insignificance...that i'll be underestimated & survive by a trick...the religion of all mice, maybe. So what does it enable them to do? Keep rom dying out completely, i suppose. And the art-impulse now, is it a time for hiding or for witnessing on streetcorners?
Neither trick has worked so far.
Monday, February 02, 2004
Freedom is the "phlogiston" of our times. Eventually they'll have to coin a new set of phrases when they want to talk about what that really involves. And as for love, we are like the laity tossing around the technical terms of medieval theologians--who themselves are ignorant of what the mystics have seen.
"I wonder what the country is like. The fields and like that, the strange smells. And, he wondered, where do you find that? Where do you go and how do you get there and stay there? What kind of trip is that, and what kind of ticket does it take? And who do you buy the ticket from?" --Through a Scanner Darkly (1977)
I don't know why i bother to think about art or art's purposes when no one could recognize my works in my doctrines or my doctrines in my works without a field guide. They are twin emanations from this friction with my world, like flames and smoke. But i am determined to know what i'm doing even if that means knowing that most of the time i don't and can't know what i'm doing (The Sleepwalker School). The pleasure i get in ordering is a trivial one and the resultant order doesn't last for long. What i discover goes back into the unconscious ferment, though. And that reflectivity must show in the changes my work has undergone, if not in any single object. Unlike most artists, i think about my art in order to upset my sense of security from them; the more uncomfortable it makes me, the better i think i have succeeded in digging deeper or flying higher; strangeness doesn't guarantee truth, but truth is always strangeand found nowhere else. A person (who herself painted) once said after looking at CARNIVOROUS EQUATIONS 2, "You're sick." To which i responded, "I sincerely hope so."
"I wonder what the country is like. The fields and like that, the strange smells. And, he wondered, where do you find that? Where do you go and how do you get there and stay there? What kind of trip is that, and what kind of ticket does it take? And who do you buy the ticket from?" --Through a Scanner Darkly (1977)
I don't know why i bother to think about art or art's purposes when no one could recognize my works in my doctrines or my doctrines in my works without a field guide. They are twin emanations from this friction with my world, like flames and smoke. But i am determined to know what i'm doing even if that means knowing that most of the time i don't and can't know what i'm doing (The Sleepwalker School). The pleasure i get in ordering is a trivial one and the resultant order doesn't last for long. What i discover goes back into the unconscious ferment, though. And that reflectivity must show in the changes my work has undergone, if not in any single object. Unlike most artists, i think about my art in order to upset my sense of security from them; the more uncomfortable it makes me, the better i think i have succeeded in digging deeper or flying higher; strangeness doesn't guarantee truth, but truth is always strangeand found nowhere else. A person (who herself painted) once said after looking at CARNIVOROUS EQUATIONS 2, "You're sick." To which i responded, "I sincerely hope so."
Saturday, January 31, 2004
Queen of the Night. (via Mysterium)
Alpha Everyman. (via Rebecca Blood)
Styrogami. (via Tofu Hut, who says: "This is simultaneously a triumph of the human spirit and one of the saddest things I've ever seen.")
Alpha Everyman. (via Rebecca Blood)
Styrogami. (via Tofu Hut, who says: "This is simultaneously a triumph of the human spirit and one of the saddest things I've ever seen.")
The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time, Martin Popoff. Which made me start my own list...
1."Purple Haze", Jimi Hendrix
2."Immigrant Song", Led Zeppelin
3."Sober", Tool
4."Eighteen", Alice Cooper
5."War Pigs", Black Sabbath
6."Aqualung", Jethro Tull
7."The Pusher", Steppenwolf
8."Hymn 42", Jethro Tull
9."Dazed and Confused", Led Zeppelin
10."Dreamer Deceiver", Judas Priest
11."Paranoid", Black Sabbath
12."Unforgiven", Metallica
13."No One Like You", Scorpions
14."Dream On", Aerosmith
15."Cult of Personality", Living Color
16."Rainbow in the Dark", Dio
17."Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", Van Halen
18."Closer to the Heart", Rush
19."Godzilla", Blue Oyster Cult
20."Stranglehold", Ted Nugent
1."Purple Haze", Jimi Hendrix
2."Immigrant Song", Led Zeppelin
3."Sober", Tool
4."Eighteen", Alice Cooper
5."War Pigs", Black Sabbath
6."Aqualung", Jethro Tull
7."The Pusher", Steppenwolf
8."Hymn 42", Jethro Tull
9."Dazed and Confused", Led Zeppelin
10."Dreamer Deceiver", Judas Priest
11."Paranoid", Black Sabbath
12."Unforgiven", Metallica
13."No One Like You", Scorpions
14."Dream On", Aerosmith
15."Cult of Personality", Living Color
16."Rainbow in the Dark", Dio
17."Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", Van Halen
18."Closer to the Heart", Rush
19."Godzilla", Blue Oyster Cult
20."Stranglehold", Ted Nugent
"The Lineaments of Gratified Desire"
He retired to the sea.
There he found what he needed:
a surf-screen to shine his thoughts on,
a solitude wide and dark enough and seamless;
rocks to build the theater physical.
Only the gulls saw stone pile upon stone,
like the identical days of his stone exile
converging to a point just short of the sun
the round irregular walls.
He said the tower would give him a place to write
in the peace he'd sacrificed everything for,
but his typewriter's mute, and the tower continues to rise.
(1981)
Art is a refutation and an antidote to simple materialism. However, consumerism can effortlessly co-opt it, unless the artist takes care to control the post-production life of his work. His greatest enemy then is not rejection but uncritical admiration; a willingness to remain, in ignorance of the person who made it, at the superficial level of textures. This would be like illiterates buying books for their covers, --except of course people do that also, don't they?-- a denial that art has meaning beyond its sensual qualities. (And Moby Dick can be read as a fish story --i don't mean just paintings)
An artist of mass produced objects (like xoxes or texts) can consciously choose to have a limited audience. This is in fact the usual route (it fits right in with society's pluralistic atomism). Or you could make them by hand and give them only to your friends. (The primitive/amateur/child/mad artist's way) Or you could include your autobiography and a detailed commentary (art school does this with students before they visit a museum--if ever). Or you could make art with several levels of meaning....the top one, almost a cliché... (Shakespeare)
He retired to the sea.
There he found what he needed:
a surf-screen to shine his thoughts on,
a solitude wide and dark enough and seamless;
rocks to build the theater physical.
Only the gulls saw stone pile upon stone,
like the identical days of his stone exile
converging to a point just short of the sun
the round irregular walls.
He said the tower would give him a place to write
in the peace he'd sacrificed everything for,
but his typewriter's mute, and the tower continues to rise.
(1981)
Art is a refutation and an antidote to simple materialism. However, consumerism can effortlessly co-opt it, unless the artist takes care to control the post-production life of his work. His greatest enemy then is not rejection but uncritical admiration; a willingness to remain, in ignorance of the person who made it, at the superficial level of textures. This would be like illiterates buying books for their covers, --except of course people do that also, don't they?-- a denial that art has meaning beyond its sensual qualities. (And Moby Dick can be read as a fish story --i don't mean just paintings)
An artist of mass produced objects (like xoxes or texts) can consciously choose to have a limited audience. This is in fact the usual route (it fits right in with society's pluralistic atomism). Or you could make them by hand and give them only to your friends. (The primitive/amateur/child/mad artist's way) Or you could include your autobiography and a detailed commentary (art school does this with students before they visit a museum--if ever). Or you could make art with several levels of meaning....the top one, almost a cliché... (Shakespeare)
Friday, January 30, 2004
"Cryptome is attacked several times a day, like many other sites, nearly always by rogue bots, or bots set by default to siphon everything, including deep links, until a new user learns to trim the wide mouth suck. WGet and Webdup are the worst offenders, but not the only ones, because they come ready to siphon everything until reconfigured. Hog bots suck thousands of files in a session before pole-axed. Prime offenders also are the ravenous searching and indexing engines, which 24/7 roam the web repeatedly gobbling the same files, or trashing with 304s for files already indexed. Because these pigs shutout other readers, Cryptome blocks any address which downloads more than 100 files per session, and that often requires blocking an entire domain for providers which assign a random address per session." --Cryptome (via Dumb Monkeys)
A different Anagram Maker than the one on my links, which is currently limiting itself to six letters. --So now i know An End to Evil is actually "Vote Laden In", "Deviant Noel", or "Vend Toenail", depending on your taste. Also, we can stop using Blogosphere now: Ogre Help Sob.
Big Brother Under the Bumper. (via Indymedia)
"From Greg Costikan, a humourful, totalitarian vision of hardware as it might be.
Troubleshooter: How much is two plus two?
PDC: What is your security clearance, Citizen user?
Troubleshooter: Red, friend PDC!
PDC: Two plus two equals a number between three and six.
Troubleshooter: What?
PDC: You are not cleared for greater precision at this time... "
--Boing Boing
390.000 Jedi. (via Fark)
10th Anniversary Edition of the Dictionary of Planned Languages.
Big Brother Under the Bumper. (via Indymedia)
"From Greg Costikan, a humourful, totalitarian vision of hardware as it might be.
Troubleshooter: How much is two plus two?
PDC: What is your security clearance, Citizen user?
Troubleshooter: Red, friend PDC!
PDC: Two plus two equals a number between three and six.
Troubleshooter: What?
PDC: You are not cleared for greater precision at this time... "
--Boing Boing
390.000 Jedi. (via Fark)
10th Anniversary Edition of the Dictionary of Planned Languages.
I only just found out about this: Wendell Berry's response to 9-11.
"I first met Garth Marenghi at the 1987 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, after the infamous "DarkFist" poetry reading at which he was beaten to a bloody pulp by Clive Barker after an argument about how many pairs of shoes could be made from the average human skin." --thatwhichfalls on Metafilter thread
"I first met Garth Marenghi at the 1987 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, after the infamous "DarkFist" poetry reading at which he was beaten to a bloody pulp by Clive Barker after an argument about how many pairs of shoes could be made from the average human skin." --thatwhichfalls on Metafilter thread
Melanie writes:
"Welcome to one of the most exciting Oscar races in years! I'm on a high this morning, and it's not just because the Academy gave its blessing(s) to the likes of Charlize Theron (MONSTER), Johnny Depp (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL), Sean Penn and Tim Robbins (MYSTIC RIVER; leading status for the former, supporting for the latter), Alec Baldwin (THE COOLER), and a handful of nominations to the wonderful IN AMERICA: Samantha Morton (Best Actress), Djimon Hounsou (Best Supporting Actress), Jim Sheridan, Kirsten Sheridan and Naomi Sheridan (Best Original Screenplay), but because Keisha Castle-Hughes, reportedly only 11 years old (but maybe closer to 13), is in the Best Actress race for the wonderful New Zealand film, WHALE RIDER. This is a beautiful thing because WHALE RIDER's U.S. distributor Newmarket (which was never affected by the temporary ban on screeners) actually campaigned for Hughes as a supporting player, even though she clearly carries (carried) the movie. This is a good instance of voters being able to sort through all the studio maneuvers and make up their own mind. To clarify, Castle-Hughes is, to the best of my knowledge, the youngest ever nominee in her category. (Castle-Hughes makes the Best Actress race interesting, but Theron still sits in catbird seat.) Likewise, voters weren't fooled by the execs at Focus Features attempts to peg Scarlett Johansson as a supporting player in Sofia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION. Johansson, as the surrogate for writer-director Coppola, was clearly too integral to TRANSLATION to be 'demoted' just to score an easy nomination. The thinking being that if Johansson were campaigned for 'Best Supporting' for LOST IN TRANSLATION, she would still have a shot at 'Best Actress' for GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING--by campaigning in two categories, instead of one, she would be less likely to split her own votes. Somehow, the strategy backfired and Johansson was not nominated in either category. Still, Johansson is only 19 or so and she's already well on her way to major movie stardom. The good news is that Sofia Coppola is now in rarefied company, as she is not only the third woman ever nominated for Best Director, and, as well, the first American woman so honored, she's also a triple-threat as she's also a co-producer of the Best Picture nominee, in addition to being in the running for her (Original) screenplay. (The Best Original Screenplay contest is a toughie, pitting two strong sentimental candidates--Coppola and the Sheridan clan--against one another.) Likewise, a sigh of relief as GIRL's cinematographer Eduardo Serra picks up a nod. Also, a thumbs up to the Academy for nominating THE LAST SAMURAI's Ken Watanabe for Best Supporting Actor (as the titular character). SAMURAI has taken a bit of a beating in this country, but a nomination for Watanabe is a good thing, in the absence of a nomination for SAMURAI star Tom Cruise (good, but apparently not good enough). SAMURAI also picked up nominations for Art Direction, Costumes and Sound Mixing. Four Oscar nominations is a definite plus; btw, designer Ngila Dickson is nominated for both SAMURAI and LORD OF THE RINGS.
The most nominated movie is THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, with 11--that's two less than the first installment, but it ultimately won't matter, as this is the movie to beat. It¹s unfortunate, however, that Sean Astin was shut out of the Best Supporting Actor race, because his performance is solid and his character is the very embodiment of what Best Supporting is all about (also shut out: cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, who won an Oscar for the first RINGS movie). The second most nominated movie is MASTER AND COMMANDER; THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, although the movie was shut out in the acting categories, which may or may not be a bad thing depending on one's tolerance for Russell Crowe...mine (tolerance, that is) is on the low-end of the scale, so I'm frankly relieved. With all due respect to Penn, Depp, Bill Murray, Jude Law (COLD MOUNTAIN), and Ben Kingsley (HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG and a previous winner for 1982's GANDHI), my favorite performance by a leading actor was IN AMERICA's Paddy Considine (as a man who could 'act' almost anything, but wouldn¹t allow himself to 'feel' too terribly much). Considine just never generated the kind ink as others associated with the movie...too bad. I also want to go on record as being very big on both Jack Black in SCHOOL OF ROCK and Will Ferrell in ELF, two wonderful comedic performances that deserved a second look (at least Black got a Globe nomination). Ditto Jamie Lee Curtis in FREAKY FRIDAY (who lost the token comic actress slot to Diane Keaton in the more conventionally middle-of-the-road SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE). Still, any year in which Johnny Depp gets nominated for something as outrageous as PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN's Captain Jack Sparrow (described by the actor as a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe LePew) is a good year, indeed. And to say Depp is overdue is an understatement, witness EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, ED WOOD, and DONNIE BRASCO.
A big disappointment for Miramax has to be the lukewarm reception for COLD MOUNTAIN. Granted, the movie still ended up scads of noms--seven?--most notably for Jude Law and Renee Zellweger (the Best Supporting Actress front runner), but the shut-outs for Best Picture, Director (previous winner Anthony Minghella, 1996's THE ENGLISH PATIENT) Actress (last year's winner for THE HOURS, Nicole Kidman) and even Best Adapted Screenplay are what reverberate. Likewise, there were high hopes at Miramax for THE STATION AGENT, but that was all for naught. Still, Miramax is one of the studios behind MASTER AND COMMANDER, so that has to count for something; last year, Miramax and/or its founders, the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, were responsible outright, or in-part, for four of the Best Picture nominations: CHICAGO (the big winner), THE HOURS, GANGS OF NEW YORK and the second LORD OF THE RINGS installment: THE TWO TOWERS (for which the brothers received courtesy credits for executive producing, or somesuch). The one picture--last Œgo-round--for which they could lay no claim was THE PIANIST.
The five Best Picture nominees are LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, LOST IN TRANSLATION (four nominations), MYSTIC RIVER (six nominations including Best Director [Clint Eastwood] and Best Supporting Actress (previous winner Marcia Hay Harden), and SEABISCUIT, with seven nominations, but, unfortunately, nothing in the Best Director category for Gary Ross (who was compensated, however, with a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay).
Another heavily hyped feature that failed to score major nominations was Tim Burton's BIG FISH, the most surprising omission being Albert Finney for Best Supporting Actor. This one is hard to figure, given the Academy's predilection for honoring more mature thespians in the Best Supporting Actor category. Still, this one looks to be a fight to the finish between Baldwin and Robbins. Besides those two, and Watanabe and Hounsou, the fifth nominee is Benicio De Toro, a previous winner for 2000's TRAFFIC.
Besides Astin, some of the other Best Supporting Actor casualties are Peter Sarsgaard (SHATTERED GLASS), and, forgive me, Eugene Levy for A MIGHTY WIND. Levy's strange 1960's music-scene burn-out was funny, touching and scary even though WIND, like other mock-documentaries from Christopher Guest (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN and BEST IN SHOW) is/was an acquirred taste. Levy's profile was heightened by an award from the New York film critics and a scene stealing turn in the Steve Martin-Queen Latifah vehicle BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE. Maybe he, like Johansson, split votes. The upside is that A MIGHTY WIND's lovely 'A Kiss at the End of a Rainbow,' the moving tune at the heart of the movie is up for Best Song . Yippee! That's just another item that makes my day! Now, I've got to figure out a way to see PIECES OF APRIL, featuring Best Supporting Actress nominee Patricia Clarkson, which I just missed during its Dallas engagement. I'm hoping the indie film gets rereleased. I¹ve also got to track down Brazil's CITY OF GOD, and will be making a beeline to see Best Animated Feature nominee THE TRIPLETS OF BELLVILLE, now that it is finally opening here (though it'll be an uphill climb, so to speak, to topple frontrunner FINDING NEMO, which is also up for a writing award, and two others)."
"Welcome to one of the most exciting Oscar races in years! I'm on a high this morning, and it's not just because the Academy gave its blessing(s) to the likes of Charlize Theron (MONSTER), Johnny Depp (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL), Sean Penn and Tim Robbins (MYSTIC RIVER; leading status for the former, supporting for the latter), Alec Baldwin (THE COOLER), and a handful of nominations to the wonderful IN AMERICA: Samantha Morton (Best Actress), Djimon Hounsou (Best Supporting Actress), Jim Sheridan, Kirsten Sheridan and Naomi Sheridan (Best Original Screenplay), but because Keisha Castle-Hughes, reportedly only 11 years old (but maybe closer to 13), is in the Best Actress race for the wonderful New Zealand film, WHALE RIDER. This is a beautiful thing because WHALE RIDER's U.S. distributor Newmarket (which was never affected by the temporary ban on screeners) actually campaigned for Hughes as a supporting player, even though she clearly carries (carried) the movie. This is a good instance of voters being able to sort through all the studio maneuvers and make up their own mind. To clarify, Castle-Hughes is, to the best of my knowledge, the youngest ever nominee in her category. (Castle-Hughes makes the Best Actress race interesting, but Theron still sits in catbird seat.) Likewise, voters weren't fooled by the execs at Focus Features attempts to peg Scarlett Johansson as a supporting player in Sofia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION. Johansson, as the surrogate for writer-director Coppola, was clearly too integral to TRANSLATION to be 'demoted' just to score an easy nomination. The thinking being that if Johansson were campaigned for 'Best Supporting' for LOST IN TRANSLATION, she would still have a shot at 'Best Actress' for GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING--by campaigning in two categories, instead of one, she would be less likely to split her own votes. Somehow, the strategy backfired and Johansson was not nominated in either category. Still, Johansson is only 19 or so and she's already well on her way to major movie stardom. The good news is that Sofia Coppola is now in rarefied company, as she is not only the third woman ever nominated for Best Director, and, as well, the first American woman so honored, she's also a triple-threat as she's also a co-producer of the Best Picture nominee, in addition to being in the running for her (Original) screenplay. (The Best Original Screenplay contest is a toughie, pitting two strong sentimental candidates--Coppola and the Sheridan clan--against one another.) Likewise, a sigh of relief as GIRL's cinematographer Eduardo Serra picks up a nod. Also, a thumbs up to the Academy for nominating THE LAST SAMURAI's Ken Watanabe for Best Supporting Actor (as the titular character). SAMURAI has taken a bit of a beating in this country, but a nomination for Watanabe is a good thing, in the absence of a nomination for SAMURAI star Tom Cruise (good, but apparently not good enough). SAMURAI also picked up nominations for Art Direction, Costumes and Sound Mixing. Four Oscar nominations is a definite plus; btw, designer Ngila Dickson is nominated for both SAMURAI and LORD OF THE RINGS.
The most nominated movie is THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, with 11--that's two less than the first installment, but it ultimately won't matter, as this is the movie to beat. It¹s unfortunate, however, that Sean Astin was shut out of the Best Supporting Actor race, because his performance is solid and his character is the very embodiment of what Best Supporting is all about (also shut out: cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, who won an Oscar for the first RINGS movie). The second most nominated movie is MASTER AND COMMANDER; THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, although the movie was shut out in the acting categories, which may or may not be a bad thing depending on one's tolerance for Russell Crowe...mine (tolerance, that is) is on the low-end of the scale, so I'm frankly relieved. With all due respect to Penn, Depp, Bill Murray, Jude Law (COLD MOUNTAIN), and Ben Kingsley (HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG and a previous winner for 1982's GANDHI), my favorite performance by a leading actor was IN AMERICA's Paddy Considine (as a man who could 'act' almost anything, but wouldn¹t allow himself to 'feel' too terribly much). Considine just never generated the kind ink as others associated with the movie...too bad. I also want to go on record as being very big on both Jack Black in SCHOOL OF ROCK and Will Ferrell in ELF, two wonderful comedic performances that deserved a second look (at least Black got a Globe nomination). Ditto Jamie Lee Curtis in FREAKY FRIDAY (who lost the token comic actress slot to Diane Keaton in the more conventionally middle-of-the-road SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE). Still, any year in which Johnny Depp gets nominated for something as outrageous as PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN's Captain Jack Sparrow (described by the actor as a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe LePew) is a good year, indeed. And to say Depp is overdue is an understatement, witness EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE, ED WOOD, and DONNIE BRASCO.
A big disappointment for Miramax has to be the lukewarm reception for COLD MOUNTAIN. Granted, the movie still ended up scads of noms--seven?--most notably for Jude Law and Renee Zellweger (the Best Supporting Actress front runner), but the shut-outs for Best Picture, Director (previous winner Anthony Minghella, 1996's THE ENGLISH PATIENT) Actress (last year's winner for THE HOURS, Nicole Kidman) and even Best Adapted Screenplay are what reverberate. Likewise, there were high hopes at Miramax for THE STATION AGENT, but that was all for naught. Still, Miramax is one of the studios behind MASTER AND COMMANDER, so that has to count for something; last year, Miramax and/or its founders, the brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, were responsible outright, or in-part, for four of the Best Picture nominations: CHICAGO (the big winner), THE HOURS, GANGS OF NEW YORK and the second LORD OF THE RINGS installment: THE TWO TOWERS (for which the brothers received courtesy credits for executive producing, or somesuch). The one picture--last Œgo-round--for which they could lay no claim was THE PIANIST.
The five Best Picture nominees are LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING, MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD, LOST IN TRANSLATION (four nominations), MYSTIC RIVER (six nominations including Best Director [Clint Eastwood] and Best Supporting Actress (previous winner Marcia Hay Harden), and SEABISCUIT, with seven nominations, but, unfortunately, nothing in the Best Director category for Gary Ross (who was compensated, however, with a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay).
Another heavily hyped feature that failed to score major nominations was Tim Burton's BIG FISH, the most surprising omission being Albert Finney for Best Supporting Actor. This one is hard to figure, given the Academy's predilection for honoring more mature thespians in the Best Supporting Actor category. Still, this one looks to be a fight to the finish between Baldwin and Robbins. Besides those two, and Watanabe and Hounsou, the fifth nominee is Benicio De Toro, a previous winner for 2000's TRAFFIC.
Besides Astin, some of the other Best Supporting Actor casualties are Peter Sarsgaard (SHATTERED GLASS), and, forgive me, Eugene Levy for A MIGHTY WIND. Levy's strange 1960's music-scene burn-out was funny, touching and scary even though WIND, like other mock-documentaries from Christopher Guest (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN and BEST IN SHOW) is/was an acquirred taste. Levy's profile was heightened by an award from the New York film critics and a scene stealing turn in the Steve Martin-Queen Latifah vehicle BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE. Maybe he, like Johansson, split votes. The upside is that A MIGHTY WIND's lovely 'A Kiss at the End of a Rainbow,' the moving tune at the heart of the movie is up for Best Song . Yippee! That's just another item that makes my day! Now, I've got to figure out a way to see PIECES OF APRIL, featuring Best Supporting Actress nominee Patricia Clarkson, which I just missed during its Dallas engagement. I'm hoping the indie film gets rereleased. I¹ve also got to track down Brazil's CITY OF GOD, and will be making a beeline to see Best Animated Feature nominee THE TRIPLETS OF BELLVILLE, now that it is finally opening here (though it'll be an uphill climb, so to speak, to topple frontrunner FINDING NEMO, which is also up for a writing award, and two others)."
The Blog Sabbatical, i promise like a Christmas; instead of presents i will gift myself with absence. The same letdown. I return to it after half a day, chastened. It's my alibi for when i leave out something important (i'll have time then to really say it right) & (alas) for all the quillets, also.
01 25 04
"Five Foo Fighters"
You weren't allowed to sit down
'cause that meant you were goofing off,
and nobody goofs off on the job
for very long.
Most of my energy went into fighting gravity.
After lunch i was like a sapling on a hillside
threatened with winds, slippage, rain runoff.
I swayed but i stood.
The radio played seven songs over and over:
i got to know them quite well.
I learned to blank out the lyrics
and add my own words.
When i went home i tried to remember
the songs i'd written that day.
It was like looking for firewood
in a snowstorm.
Today i heard one of those songs,
and felt the meaning i'd carved on its bark
those intolerable days, if not the exact phrases:
MINIMUM WAGE.
(1981)
Travelling is my only drunkenness.
How to be an elitist without snobbery: whatever your specialty, call it a birth defect.
Dilemma of the modern artist--invent a new language to tell the truth and no one can understand it. The next dilemma--everyone speaks a different language and starts to collect into sub-sub-subcultures. And ours--people have forgotten what language is for.
This is the late twentieth century so i believe in magic and i believe in chemicals and most of my insights will fall between the two because both half-truth languages are too small for them and my metaphors walk on air or they don't go anywhere and what else is new?
"I was shipwrecked before I got aboard." --Sterling Hatden
Very likely the best minds of my generation are in prison. That would account for a lot of things...
01 25 04
"Five Foo Fighters"
You weren't allowed to sit down
'cause that meant you were goofing off,
and nobody goofs off on the job
for very long.
Most of my energy went into fighting gravity.
After lunch i was like a sapling on a hillside
threatened with winds, slippage, rain runoff.
I swayed but i stood.
The radio played seven songs over and over:
i got to know them quite well.
I learned to blank out the lyrics
and add my own words.
When i went home i tried to remember
the songs i'd written that day.
It was like looking for firewood
in a snowstorm.
Today i heard one of those songs,
and felt the meaning i'd carved on its bark
those intolerable days, if not the exact phrases:
MINIMUM WAGE.
(1981)
Travelling is my only drunkenness.
How to be an elitist without snobbery: whatever your specialty, call it a birth defect.
Dilemma of the modern artist--invent a new language to tell the truth and no one can understand it. The next dilemma--everyone speaks a different language and starts to collect into sub-sub-subcultures. And ours--people have forgotten what language is for.
This is the late twentieth century so i believe in magic and i believe in chemicals and most of my insights will fall between the two because both half-truth languages are too small for them and my metaphors walk on air or they don't go anywhere and what else is new?
"I was shipwrecked before I got aboard." --Sterling Hatden
Very likely the best minds of my generation are in prison. That would account for a lot of things...
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Pakistan's next. (via Disinformation)
Director's Cut. (via Boing Boing)
Thor Heyerdahl has written his memoirs.
Bring it on. (via Where We're Bound)
The Tyrant's Tales.
Vulnavia of the Picts. (via Poor Clio)
Director's Cut. (via Boing Boing)
Thor Heyerdahl has written his memoirs.
Bring it on. (via Where We're Bound)
The Tyrant's Tales.
Vulnavia of the Picts. (via Poor Clio)
Organ Donor Trainee.
Forget piracy--worry about pirates.
"I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a "deserter." What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants. In fact, he shot a man in Tucson "just to watch him die." " --Michael Moore
Forget piracy--worry about pirates.
"I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a "deserter." What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants. In fact, he shot a man in Tucson "just to watch him die." " --Michael Moore
"Also, why waste all this scary bioengineering on fish when you could introduce it into the wild by breeding the GlowRoach?
First of all, much easier to kill, and what a quick and easy way to spruce up the ghetto. Hey, if you do a handstand in your kitchen it's like a Lazer Floyd show." --Dong Resin
No more sky burial?
Remembering Nissim Ezekiel.
(via Under the Fire Star)
First of all, much easier to kill, and what a quick and easy way to spruce up the ghetto. Hey, if you do a handstand in your kitchen it's like a Lazer Floyd show." --Dong Resin
No more sky burial?
Remembering Nissim Ezekiel.
(via Under the Fire Star)
"Bridge Over Wobbled Trotters"
A populace that never goes outside. The channels they tune into, variously describe it as sunny, gray, threatening, or blizzardous. This occasions numerous arguments among the few who are weather aficionados. I walk in & out of these arguments like a pigeon at a crosswalk. The roof cracks; soon we will know who is lying.
01 29 04
A populace that never goes outside. The channels they tune into, variously describe it as sunny, gray, threatening, or blizzardous. This occasions numerous arguments among the few who are weather aficionados. I walk in & out of these arguments like a pigeon at a crosswalk. The roof cracks; soon we will know who is lying.
01 29 04
"[Sound of vehicle, a humvee I guess, in the background]
Female voice: I am really tired I haven’t slept well last night. Ooh look…can you hold on to my [some weapon or other] while I take a picture of this.
[Sound of snoring]
Female voice: Is sergeant (so-and-so) still sleeping? He had a tough night.
Darth Vader voice: Being on military convoy is a serious situation, always wear your seat belts, maintain speed and distance. And always stay alert." --Salam Pax, listening to American military radio
Female voice: I am really tired I haven’t slept well last night. Ooh look…can you hold on to my [some weapon or other] while I take a picture of this.
[Sound of snoring]
Female voice: Is sergeant (so-and-so) still sleeping? He had a tough night.
Darth Vader voice: Being on military convoy is a serious situation, always wear your seat belts, maintain speed and distance. And always stay alert." --Salam Pax, listening to American military radio
from a "bio" for Atticus Review:
"M.H. is a victim of a rare and acute form of synesthesia in which all imaginary beings, however uncouth, are plain, tangible, and ordinary, while the world of things as they are appears a preposterous put-on."
'Ah, not being sundered,/ not through such a little partition/ excluded from the star-measure./ Innerness, what is it?/ If not heightened sky,/ scattered through with birds and deep/ from winds of hometurning.' --Rilke (1925)
The peace after making art--a diamond that's clear; and the peace after working hard (physically)--that's a diamond that's opaque. I wouldn't have one less than the other. But it's not these i love--they are what lets me love.
When i drove back from Fort Worth with practically no brakes, it seemed as though more people were driving across the road than along it. That's perception.
How could i not love living, when there are poets and painters and musicians to be discovered?
If a reckoning could be made, i might find that altogether i have one hour of inspiration in a year. The rest? an ordinary life--with the vanity of having been otherwise.
All our small but near worries, looming large, block any possible concern for the rest of the world's woe. Why not, you say. --Having heard it before, so many times. And one who cares, is always having to meet the same opponent, not in argument so much as inertial resistance. In these words, instead of new ones, repeated, you may measure the grip of the status quo, and its lack of freedom, of creativity, of life's renewal,--that doesn't even bother to change its lies across a span of generations, and doesn't need to. For we are not rationalists, susceptible to the finality of a logical refutation. We are clay in the system's hands, who seldom get a chance to pass through fire, by its solicitude; we are eager to confide our weakness, fearing spiritual ambition as we fear cancer, and all too clever to rationalize and cover up, reflexively, --so that your friends and family would be blind to your addiction, your creeping disease or creeping madness, unless you called attention to it --and for what? For a ghost called Happiness. Often only a name for the pain that is old and grown familiar, never seen anymore, as it might have been in the beginning a terror, now terrible to do without.
Those whom i really ought to be addressing with my art of political angst, all i know of them is their dirty license plates at eye level as they roar past me: caught in the grip of the need to pass an old car, no matter how fast it is going.
"M.H. is a victim of a rare and acute form of synesthesia in which all imaginary beings, however uncouth, are plain, tangible, and ordinary, while the world of things as they are appears a preposterous put-on."
'Ah, not being sundered,/ not through such a little partition/ excluded from the star-measure./ Innerness, what is it?/ If not heightened sky,/ scattered through with birds and deep/ from winds of hometurning.' --Rilke (1925)
The peace after making art--a diamond that's clear; and the peace after working hard (physically)--that's a diamond that's opaque. I wouldn't have one less than the other. But it's not these i love--they are what lets me love.
When i drove back from Fort Worth with practically no brakes, it seemed as though more people were driving across the road than along it. That's perception.
How could i not love living, when there are poets and painters and musicians to be discovered?
If a reckoning could be made, i might find that altogether i have one hour of inspiration in a year. The rest? an ordinary life--with the vanity of having been otherwise.
All our small but near worries, looming large, block any possible concern for the rest of the world's woe. Why not, you say. --Having heard it before, so many times. And one who cares, is always having to meet the same opponent, not in argument so much as inertial resistance. In these words, instead of new ones, repeated, you may measure the grip of the status quo, and its lack of freedom, of creativity, of life's renewal,--that doesn't even bother to change its lies across a span of generations, and doesn't need to. For we are not rationalists, susceptible to the finality of a logical refutation. We are clay in the system's hands, who seldom get a chance to pass through fire, by its solicitude; we are eager to confide our weakness, fearing spiritual ambition as we fear cancer, and all too clever to rationalize and cover up, reflexively, --so that your friends and family would be blind to your addiction, your creeping disease or creeping madness, unless you called attention to it --and for what? For a ghost called Happiness. Often only a name for the pain that is old and grown familiar, never seen anymore, as it might have been in the beginning a terror, now terrible to do without.
Those whom i really ought to be addressing with my art of political angst, all i know of them is their dirty license plates at eye level as they roar past me: caught in the grip of the need to pass an old car, no matter how fast it is going.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
"Bilge Challenge Sonnet using Donne's Rhymewords"
When some internal circuitry did blow
And nevermore to audit or arise
The Finnish tax man sat, infinities
(Now neatly summed) hovered only to go
And elsewhere tenanted manshapes to o'erthrow.
But those beside him bound by tyrannies
Of rule & clock, could not but let their eyes
Flick across this Calvary of his woe:
Assuming he was in a diligent space.
So two days passed. Where cubicles abound,
Is neither joy, nor novelty, nor grace,
Yet sometimes truth... A neighbor trod his ground
With too much load, & one on top bonked good
The poor temp's nog, which promptly spurted blood.
01 24 04
What bothers me most about jail is how quickly i get used to it--i can't sustain my outrage. For i've been trained to this place, engraved with the rules upon my early years--and in fact it's freedom i can never get used to... I thought i had a thirst for freedom, but it was only the desperate longing to escape. I have to acquire a taste for freedom; at first i don't even like it.
And i want to be a liberator...
If the rules matter don't say it's not a game. And the hunt, too, was once made into a game. But not only. Shall i demand, every chess match must be for blood? --Someone's.
When some internal circuitry did blow
And nevermore to audit or arise
The Finnish tax man sat, infinities
(Now neatly summed) hovered only to go
And elsewhere tenanted manshapes to o'erthrow.
But those beside him bound by tyrannies
Of rule & clock, could not but let their eyes
Flick across this Calvary of his woe:
Assuming he was in a diligent space.
So two days passed. Where cubicles abound,
Is neither joy, nor novelty, nor grace,
Yet sometimes truth... A neighbor trod his ground
With too much load, & one on top bonked good
The poor temp's nog, which promptly spurted blood.
01 24 04
What bothers me most about jail is how quickly i get used to it--i can't sustain my outrage. For i've been trained to this place, engraved with the rules upon my early years--and in fact it's freedom i can never get used to... I thought i had a thirst for freedom, but it was only the desperate longing to escape. I have to acquire a taste for freedom; at first i don't even like it.
And i want to be a liberator...
If the rules matter don't say it's not a game. And the hunt, too, was once made into a game. But not only. Shall i demand, every chess match must be for blood? --Someone's.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Heaven & Hell are for artists only. But they have trouble believing in purgatory.
Sexuality is the basis of every certainty. (And doubting is a kind of chasteness.)
I felt a strange sensation, fever without heat, lightness without movement; i shook with a lost, unnameable emotion strong like a foreign chemical... And yet, it was long my own. I saw it then as fear. As though seen through a telescope reversed, small and far away: the fear of what? only dying. I went on with my business. This is something else to know, for sure. Had i never known i lived?
Nonviolence only has meaning against force that's not routine. --Then what can we use against routine force? How would you stop a tank? At its head. With routine force humans become appendages, mere tools. But there is always one who isn't--isn't there? Can all this violence be part of a natural process??
Compilation Tape 3-27-88
Current 93: The Pope Held Upside Down
Michelle Shocked: Disoriented
Coil: At the Heart of It All
Function Disorder: After Man
The Blasters: Common Man
Anne Waldman: Oh Oh Plutonium
Throbbing Gristle: Weeping
Patti Smith: God Speed
Patti Smith: Elegie
Patti Smith: Free Money
Patti Smith: Because the Night
Ferron: I Never Was to Africa
Ferron: Proud Crowd/Pride Cried
Talking Heads: Psycho Killer ('77 Version)
Kathy Acker: from The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (rec. 1978)
Charles Bernstein: Wall As (rec. 1980)
Sexuality is the basis of every certainty. (And doubting is a kind of chasteness.)
I felt a strange sensation, fever without heat, lightness without movement; i shook with a lost, unnameable emotion strong like a foreign chemical... And yet, it was long my own. I saw it then as fear. As though seen through a telescope reversed, small and far away: the fear of what? only dying. I went on with my business. This is something else to know, for sure. Had i never known i lived?
Nonviolence only has meaning against force that's not routine. --Then what can we use against routine force? How would you stop a tank? At its head. With routine force humans become appendages, mere tools. But there is always one who isn't--isn't there? Can all this violence be part of a natural process??
Compilation Tape 3-27-88
Current 93: The Pope Held Upside Down
Michelle Shocked: Disoriented
Coil: At the Heart of It All
Function Disorder: After Man
The Blasters: Common Man
Anne Waldman: Oh Oh Plutonium
Throbbing Gristle: Weeping
Patti Smith: God Speed
Patti Smith: Elegie
Patti Smith: Free Money
Patti Smith: Because the Night
Ferron: I Never Was to Africa
Ferron: Proud Crowd/Pride Cried
Talking Heads: Psycho Killer ('77 Version)
Kathy Acker: from The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (rec. 1978)
Charles Bernstein: Wall As (rec. 1980)
Monday, January 26, 2004
Orcinus on AWOL Bush.
Wonderful blog entry from Salam Pax. I wish someone would read it out loud on "Saturday Night Live" or something.
Stores all stripped down to the bare basics: ten executives & one checker.
Got a mole burned off with Liquid Nitrogen. I thought there would be heavy gloves & a pyrex eyedropper, but all the doctor used was a paper cup (smoking like hot coffee) & a Q-tip. While he was doing it i was thinking: There are whole worlds at this temperature.
I see how it will go. We are already lining up for the privilege of dealing with a checkout robot.
While i was trying to track down the origin of the Wombat Pun ("eats, roots, shoots, & leaves") i discovered this one: "Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super callused fragile mystic vexed by halitosis." Here.
I understand too perfectly the joy of being a vandal, & that makes me already a compromised sort of architect.
Mutabaruka has a home page.
Wonderful blog entry from Salam Pax. I wish someone would read it out loud on "Saturday Night Live" or something.
Stores all stripped down to the bare basics: ten executives & one checker.
Got a mole burned off with Liquid Nitrogen. I thought there would be heavy gloves & a pyrex eyedropper, but all the doctor used was a paper cup (smoking like hot coffee) & a Q-tip. While he was doing it i was thinking: There are whole worlds at this temperature.
I see how it will go. We are already lining up for the privilege of dealing with a checkout robot.
While i was trying to track down the origin of the Wombat Pun ("eats, roots, shoots, & leaves") i discovered this one: "Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super callused fragile mystic vexed by halitosis." Here.
I understand too perfectly the joy of being a vandal, & that makes me already a compromised sort of architect.
Mutabaruka has a home page.
"To a Mosquito"
I mashed you against the glass.
Now you hang there, effortlessly,
like a spacewalker or Lucifer falling
and the cars fly behind you
in this raw blue dawn.
Of all the mosquitos here
you must be the largest and most fearsome.
Your delicate rigging is almost intact;
your scales poised, your antennae tuned to skin-seeking.
I don't know why I killed you:
it was more instinct than reason.
Mosquitos feasted on me nightlong,
but you were only trying to get out.
Somehow I have a feeling if I were to take
that tiny bulb of an abdomen and squeeze it
no blood of mine would issue forth.
We were waiting for the early bus together
and you must have been hungry as I.
[from PHOENICIANS (1981)]
Midway between a virgin birth and an abortion.
Without discourse, i can't tell if i'm telling the truth or not. (Sic semper tyrannis)
I think art should be like: sparks from welding (maybe the real action too bright to look at directly), thrown out, superabundantly, with no thought for their home. But what i feel about my own works is more like: messages from another star, that i don't even understand (is that why they're precious to me?) --and my modesty, that i'm never satisfied, is only because they're so nearly perfect...
Without the touch of another, you walk on air.
At times when i have been sick, stoned, or shaken, i thought i came close to understanding the trustlessness of a life like A----'s. But that doesn't give me any more communion with it. I learn a terrible loneliness--and forget, because even myself is not one, when i return to myself. Compared with that, my regular solitude is rich and teeming with shades. Did i curse haunting? when i was sick perhaps. But between life and morbidity there is a chasm, which all talk of death and dying by the lively but mocks. And i think it is the constant listening for this mockery, that makes a person violent. Otherwise they could be content with selfpity.
I mashed you against the glass.
Now you hang there, effortlessly,
like a spacewalker or Lucifer falling
and the cars fly behind you
in this raw blue dawn.
Of all the mosquitos here
you must be the largest and most fearsome.
Your delicate rigging is almost intact;
your scales poised, your antennae tuned to skin-seeking.
I don't know why I killed you:
it was more instinct than reason.
Mosquitos feasted on me nightlong,
but you were only trying to get out.
Somehow I have a feeling if I were to take
that tiny bulb of an abdomen and squeeze it
no blood of mine would issue forth.
We were waiting for the early bus together
and you must have been hungry as I.
[from PHOENICIANS (1981)]
Midway between a virgin birth and an abortion.
Without discourse, i can't tell if i'm telling the truth or not. (Sic semper tyrannis)
I think art should be like: sparks from welding (maybe the real action too bright to look at directly), thrown out, superabundantly, with no thought for their home. But what i feel about my own works is more like: messages from another star, that i don't even understand (is that why they're precious to me?) --and my modesty, that i'm never satisfied, is only because they're so nearly perfect...
Without the touch of another, you walk on air.
At times when i have been sick, stoned, or shaken, i thought i came close to understanding the trustlessness of a life like A----'s. But that doesn't give me any more communion with it. I learn a terrible loneliness--and forget, because even myself is not one, when i return to myself. Compared with that, my regular solitude is rich and teeming with shades. Did i curse haunting? when i was sick perhaps. But between life and morbidity there is a chasm, which all talk of death and dying by the lively but mocks. And i think it is the constant listening for this mockery, that makes a person violent. Otherwise they could be content with selfpity.
Saturday, January 24, 2004
McKendree Robbins Long. (via Solipsis)
This is the first thing of Gould's i can hear. I don't completely understand it, but i like the sounds...
This is the first thing of Gould's i can hear. I don't completely understand it, but i like the sounds...
Elliott Carter at 95.
Advice for Dean.
(Sorta fills in the void left in my life since Cintra Wilson quit writing for Salon.)
The Hieroglyphic Monad.
Advice for Dean.
(Sorta fills in the void left in my life since Cintra Wilson quit writing for Salon.)
The Hieroglyphic Monad.
I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that the most powerful force in American politics today is something we don't even have a word for. So i will just invent one: thristnidinghent- the ability to ignore the needs of others. This goes all the way from the clerk who studiously ignores you at the checkout counter, to people who will step over a body on the sidewalk without breaking stride (not to mention higher crimes of our unbenevolent masters). Thus we can cease with historically-inaccurate sobriquets of "Nazi" & "fascist" & simply state: "This debate is over whether thristnidinghent is a good thing or a bad thing." And: "These purthristnidinghensive policies must be changed."
"Neanderthal Poem aka State of the Union Speech, 2004
me bushman in white cave!
me strong, me big!
me want more more more!
four more!
me want me clan big go, big go iraq!
bad bad iraqi have big big stones!
me want no big stones in not me clan!
me stone-man, me club-man!
not me not have stones, not clubs!
they bad!
big go iraq rock throw on bad bad iraqi!
club hit bad bad iraqi in Baghdad!
bad iraqi not bow me clan!
not bow not pray in me sacred cave!
hide in bad-man cave!
me no find long time!
me want big go iraqi too!
me big go eat bird on bird day with me clan!
me do me want, me all do me want!
me big!
me find bad man iraqi clan big man!
me clan clean big bad man bad hair!
eat bad man lice get bad man spirit!
me want all not me like me!
not me do like me do!
all do me do!
all pray in me cave me spirit!
me spirit most big spirit!
one spirit three spirit!
spirit died help me win!
spirit died on tree-flesh me!
me pray to tree-flesh!
tree-flesh totem!
all bad bad iraqi pray to voodoo totem!
pray five!
five bad!
pray bad day!
me pray first day bad bad iraqis pray seven day!
they shaman bad mans!
but bad man help me clan good!
good bad man hit brothers sisters me club me stone!
kill brothers sisters mothers fathers!
they good bad mans!
me clan big man four more!
me want win me win!
me more sacred bones!
bad mans me clan lose!
they no bones!
they no big father!
they not many bow bow pray!
me bow bow pray more!
me good!"
--Millie Niss on the Buffalo Poetics List
"Neanderthal Poem aka State of the Union Speech, 2004
me bushman in white cave!
me strong, me big!
me want more more more!
four more!
me want me clan big go, big go iraq!
bad bad iraqi have big big stones!
me want no big stones in not me clan!
me stone-man, me club-man!
not me not have stones, not clubs!
they bad!
big go iraq rock throw on bad bad iraqi!
club hit bad bad iraqi in Baghdad!
bad iraqi not bow me clan!
not bow not pray in me sacred cave!
hide in bad-man cave!
me no find long time!
me want big go iraqi too!
me big go eat bird on bird day with me clan!
me do me want, me all do me want!
me big!
me find bad man iraqi clan big man!
me clan clean big bad man bad hair!
eat bad man lice get bad man spirit!
me want all not me like me!
not me do like me do!
all do me do!
all pray in me cave me spirit!
me spirit most big spirit!
one spirit three spirit!
spirit died help me win!
spirit died on tree-flesh me!
me pray to tree-flesh!
tree-flesh totem!
all bad bad iraqi pray to voodoo totem!
pray five!
five bad!
pray bad day!
me pray first day bad bad iraqis pray seven day!
they shaman bad mans!
but bad man help me clan good!
good bad man hit brothers sisters me club me stone!
kill brothers sisters mothers fathers!
they good bad mans!
me clan big man four more!
me want win me win!
me more sacred bones!
bad mans me clan lose!
they no bones!
they no big father!
they not many bow bow pray!
me bow bow pray more!
me good!"
--Millie Niss on the Buffalo Poetics List
Friday, January 23, 2004
Elephants Don't Play Chess*.
Elephants Don't Play Backgammon Either.
Why Elephants Don't Play Hopscotch.
...Elephants Don't Play the Saxphone...(sic)
Of course, elephants don't play Polo.
Elephants don't play chicken with motorbike taxis.
...elephants don't play snooker...
----------------------------------------------------
*I dunno. Maybe the first chess set they tried the elephants on was made of ivory?
Elephants Don't Play Backgammon Either.
Why Elephants Don't Play Hopscotch.
...Elephants Don't Play the Saxphone...(sic)
Of course, elephants don't play Polo.
Elephants don't play chicken with motorbike taxis.
...elephants don't play snooker...
----------------------------------------------------
*I dunno. Maybe the first chess set they tried the elephants on was made of ivory?
I need a name for webpage-generated poems: "xenon missives".
Here's a couple based on the Red-Assed Baboon-in-Chief's latest gibberish:
"The Pile Made Higher"
1.
President Thank you to do
For younger workers pass
a lot
to each other, issues: in all
who can accumulate, and acts of the
terrorists have a great goals larger
than 200,000
new creed: roll.
Applause. And violence. No people from
Europe to Congress. to encourage the side
of the United
States military.
2.
President Delivers State sponsors
the materials, technology, build
infrastructure, and resolve
As nations are proving
their own
citizens A sound tax
relief so long ago, on
the man who can vanish in awe of thousands
of two key issues, trade
and I will
be partners in the future, make Social
Security will
Applause. broader
home My budget includes coverage Applause.
Our cause
and resolve. of opportunity
and modern Medicare Iraq continues
to school. with
Russia and the
world
of the day and responded
by outlaw regimes, that
we have to train and continents,
on government seized terrorists who have executed an
airline
flight attendant spotted a
creed.
01-23-04
[This, of course, is what Xenon Mercurists do.]
Here's a couple based on the Red-Assed Baboon-in-Chief's latest gibberish:
"The Pile Made Higher"
1.
President Thank you to do
For younger workers pass
a lot
to each other, issues: in all
who can accumulate, and acts of the
terrorists have a great goals larger
than 200,000
new creed: roll.
Applause. And violence. No people from
Europe to Congress. to encourage the side
of the United
States military.
2.
President Delivers State sponsors
the materials, technology, build
infrastructure, and resolve
As nations are proving
their own
citizens A sound tax
relief so long ago, on
the man who can vanish in awe of thousands
of two key issues, trade
and I will
be partners in the future, make Social
Security will
Applause. broader
home My budget includes coverage Applause.
Our cause
and resolve. of opportunity
and modern Medicare Iraq continues
to school. with
Russia and the
world
of the day and responded
by outlaw regimes, that
we have to train and continents,
on government seized terrorists who have executed an
airline
flight attendant spotted a
creed.
01-23-04
[This, of course, is what Xenon Mercurists do.]
Ethiopian Genocide. (via Dr Menlo)
I figured out what the "Mars Initiative" is all about. When Guantanamo Bay fills up, they'll need some place to send dissidents...
The Case for Cannibalism.
Speaking Truth to Power.
I figured out what the "Mars Initiative" is all about. When Guantanamo Bay fills up, they'll need some place to send dissidents...
The Case for Cannibalism.
Speaking Truth to Power.
"Captain Kangaroo" is dead.
New Local Poetry Venue:
POET: Da Boogie Man
BAND: Smooth Choppy
DJ: Whiz T
RINGMASTER: Rock Baby
WHEN: Thursday, January 29, 2004
WHERE: The PUB @
The University of Texas at Dallas
2601 North Floyd Road
Richardson, Texas
TIME: 10PM - MIDNIGHT
ADMISSION: FREE
With FREE: Food, Door Prizes, and Fountain Drinks
Also ½ price Starbucks Coffees
Contact: GNO at nommomobius at yahoo dot com
Information Feudalism. (via Wood_s Lot)
New Local Poetry Venue:
POET: Da Boogie Man
BAND: Smooth Choppy
DJ: Whiz T
RINGMASTER: Rock Baby
WHEN: Thursday, January 29, 2004
WHERE: The PUB @
The University of Texas at Dallas
2601 North Floyd Road
Richardson, Texas
TIME: 10PM - MIDNIGHT
ADMISSION: FREE
With FREE: Food, Door Prizes, and Fountain Drinks
Also ½ price Starbucks Coffees
Contact: GNO at nommomobius at yahoo dot com
Information Feudalism. (via Wood_s Lot)
City of poets, writers and scientists. (It was the first state to recognize the USA as an independent nation.) (Also, the English word "argosy" comes from its other name, Ragusa.)
I've been writing today's date 012304 &...it's all consecutive numbers!
Listening to: Classic Mountain Songs.
[This should have been the soundtrack for Cold Mountain...Yeah, & they should have cast Kate Winslett as "Ada", too (Melanie says Scarlett Johansson).]
I've been writing today's date 012304 &...it's all consecutive numbers!
Listening to: Classic Mountain Songs.
[This should have been the soundtrack for Cold Mountain...Yeah, & they should have cast Kate Winslett as "Ada", too (Melanie says Scarlett Johansson).]
A Catalogue of Warlords. (via Bruce Sterling)
The Quest for the Golden Hare. (This is much more interesting than the same sort of story when written by the likes of Dan Brown & Perez-Reverte)
Vacation in Yakutia.
"In every way Baroque music is like a teen-ager."
The Quest for the Golden Hare. (This is much more interesting than the same sort of story when written by the likes of Dan Brown & Perez-Reverte)
Vacation in Yakutia.
"In every way Baroque music is like a teen-ager."
Melanie reviews:
"With Oscar nominations just days away, I've decided to send out mini reviews of a couple of movies in case anyone out there wants to catch up on their moviegoing this weekend. First and foremost, I wll recommend Monster, starring Charlize Theron as (fairly) recently executed serial killer Aileen Wuornos. In a lifetime of moviegoing, few films have ever elicted from me such an emotional response. Monster makes me weep for humanity. Aileen Wuornos was damaged goods almost from the time she was born. My post-viewing research has led me to believe that this woman, even as a young girl, suffered from sort of emotional or mental imbalance and probably what she needed most was someone to love her and take proper care of her; instead, she was thrown out on the streets when she was still in her teens (14-15, as I recall), and everything that was wrong with her was allowed to go untreated and just sort of snowballed; falling prey to prostitution certainly didn't help. If anything, I'm sure it only served to worsen her already anti-social behavior. The truth is this: nobody is born a monster...they (monsters, that is) are shaped by the circumstances that are thrown their way, and in Wuornos's case, very little of it was pretty, but, again, I think there is every reason to believe she suffered from sort of genuine disorder that went untreated. I'd like to think that if she'd gotten the help she so clearly needed, she would not have ever resorted to killing the way she did; so not only was her life damaged, but so were others--her victims and their families, and if this isn't enough for all of us to weep for humanity, I don't know what is. Monster stars beautiful South African reared actress Charlize Theron, who, until now, has made a career of being a decorative presence in movies (to be fair, some of the blame must be blamed on unimaginative Hollywood suits who just don't know what to do with a goddessy type like Theron). At any rate, Theron, who co-produced Monster (written and directed by Patty Jenkins) has not only effected a startlingly physical transformation as Wuornos, she's also reached into the innermost depths of her very being to bring out every possible emotion, every possible nuance, of this character's unsettling psychological makeup. The scene in which she professes herself a good person won't easily be forgotten (and that's just one of numerous highly charged moments). If there is any justice at all, Theron will win this year's Best Actress Oscar, and yet that (an Oscar) would almost serve to trivialize a harrowing real-life tragedy, not to mention doing the same (trivializing) what is truly a singular work of art, and make no mistake, that is exactly what this movie is: art of a most accomplished sort; one that could not have come easily for any of its participants. Still, if we are going to have Oscars, then, yes, Theron must be honored, for no other actress in 2003 has put as much on the line as she has in Monster. To clarify, this is not a movie that in any way excuses Wuornos for her actions; rather, the goal is to get as far inside her head as possible, to humanize her and show us that no one person on this earth is all one thing or another. Wuornos is a case study in extremes, but she was still human--and we must learn from that.
I also want to, on a lighter note, recommend Girl With a Pearl Earring, a meditation on 17th century Dutch painter Vermeer's famous painting (of the same name). The movie is based on a popular work of fiction (a hypothetical account of the painter's model, or alleged model, by Tracy Chevalier), and it doesn't offer much in the way of nail biting excitement--nor is it to be taken as the last word on Vermeer (about whom very little is known, anyway). This movie's most significant accomplishment is the way it apes Vermeer's style in image after image; in that regard it is dazzling, and deserves to be seen by anyone who is fan of Vermeer, or the art of cinematography itself. Remember, movies began as a visual medium, and every now and then we're lucky enough to get a film which celebrates that in a poetic--dare I say, painterly--and compelling way. In this instance, a round of applause to the great cinematographer Eduardo Serra (who, let's cross our fingers, will be nominated by his peers); he was previously nominated for 1997's luxe The Wings of the Dove. Girl With a Pearl Earring stars the always watchable Colin Firth and luscious newcomer Scarlett Johansson (of Lost in Translation and Ghost World), and is directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay is by Olivia Hetreed, with costumes by Dien Van Straalen. The Art Director is Christina Schaffer, and the Production Designer is Ben van Os. (Myself, I've never understood the distinction between those two job titles.) The score is by Alexandre Desplat. The movie was shot primarily in Luxembourg, but also Belgium and the Netherlands.
Both Monster and Girl With a Pearl Earring are must-sees."
Listening to: Miles Davis- Aura (1989). [He can still surprise me.]
"With Oscar nominations just days away, I've decided to send out mini reviews of a couple of movies in case anyone out there wants to catch up on their moviegoing this weekend. First and foremost, I wll recommend Monster, starring Charlize Theron as (fairly) recently executed serial killer Aileen Wuornos. In a lifetime of moviegoing, few films have ever elicted from me such an emotional response. Monster makes me weep for humanity. Aileen Wuornos was damaged goods almost from the time she was born. My post-viewing research has led me to believe that this woman, even as a young girl, suffered from sort of emotional or mental imbalance and probably what she needed most was someone to love her and take proper care of her; instead, she was thrown out on the streets when she was still in her teens (14-15, as I recall), and everything that was wrong with her was allowed to go untreated and just sort of snowballed; falling prey to prostitution certainly didn't help. If anything, I'm sure it only served to worsen her already anti-social behavior. The truth is this: nobody is born a monster...they (monsters, that is) are shaped by the circumstances that are thrown their way, and in Wuornos's case, very little of it was pretty, but, again, I think there is every reason to believe she suffered from sort of genuine disorder that went untreated. I'd like to think that if she'd gotten the help she so clearly needed, she would not have ever resorted to killing the way she did; so not only was her life damaged, but so were others--her victims and their families, and if this isn't enough for all of us to weep for humanity, I don't know what is. Monster stars beautiful South African reared actress Charlize Theron, who, until now, has made a career of being a decorative presence in movies (to be fair, some of the blame must be blamed on unimaginative Hollywood suits who just don't know what to do with a goddessy type like Theron). At any rate, Theron, who co-produced Monster (written and directed by Patty Jenkins) has not only effected a startlingly physical transformation as Wuornos, she's also reached into the innermost depths of her very being to bring out every possible emotion, every possible nuance, of this character's unsettling psychological makeup. The scene in which she professes herself a good person won't easily be forgotten (and that's just one of numerous highly charged moments). If there is any justice at all, Theron will win this year's Best Actress Oscar, and yet that (an Oscar) would almost serve to trivialize a harrowing real-life tragedy, not to mention doing the same (trivializing) what is truly a singular work of art, and make no mistake, that is exactly what this movie is: art of a most accomplished sort; one that could not have come easily for any of its participants. Still, if we are going to have Oscars, then, yes, Theron must be honored, for no other actress in 2003 has put as much on the line as she has in Monster. To clarify, this is not a movie that in any way excuses Wuornos for her actions; rather, the goal is to get as far inside her head as possible, to humanize her and show us that no one person on this earth is all one thing or another. Wuornos is a case study in extremes, but she was still human--and we must learn from that.
I also want to, on a lighter note, recommend Girl With a Pearl Earring, a meditation on 17th century Dutch painter Vermeer's famous painting (of the same name). The movie is based on a popular work of fiction (a hypothetical account of the painter's model, or alleged model, by Tracy Chevalier), and it doesn't offer much in the way of nail biting excitement--nor is it to be taken as the last word on Vermeer (about whom very little is known, anyway). This movie's most significant accomplishment is the way it apes Vermeer's style in image after image; in that regard it is dazzling, and deserves to be seen by anyone who is fan of Vermeer, or the art of cinematography itself. Remember, movies began as a visual medium, and every now and then we're lucky enough to get a film which celebrates that in a poetic--dare I say, painterly--and compelling way. In this instance, a round of applause to the great cinematographer Eduardo Serra (who, let's cross our fingers, will be nominated by his peers); he was previously nominated for 1997's luxe The Wings of the Dove. Girl With a Pearl Earring stars the always watchable Colin Firth and luscious newcomer Scarlett Johansson (of Lost in Translation and Ghost World), and is directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay is by Olivia Hetreed, with costumes by Dien Van Straalen. The Art Director is Christina Schaffer, and the Production Designer is Ben van Os. (Myself, I've never understood the distinction between those two job titles.) The score is by Alexandre Desplat. The movie was shot primarily in Luxembourg, but also Belgium and the Netherlands.
Both Monster and Girl With a Pearl Earring are must-sees."
Listening to: Miles Davis- Aura (1989). [He can still surprise me.]
"I Dreamed My Genesis
I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking
Through the rotating shell, strong
As motor muscle on the drill, driving
Through vision and the girdered nerve.
From limbs that had the measure of the worm, shuffled
Off from the creasing flesh, filed
Through all the irons in the grass, metal
Of suns in the man-melting night.
Heir to the scalding veins that hold love's drop, costly
A creature in my bones I
Rounded my globe of heritage, journey
In bottom gear through night-geared man.
I dreamed my genesis and died again, shrapnel
Rammed in the marching heart, hole
In the stitched wound and clotted wind, muzzled
Death on the mouth that ate the gas.
Sharp in my second death I marked the hills, harvest
Of hemlock and the blades, rust
My blood upon the tempered dead, forcing
My second struggling from the grass.
And power was contagious in my birth, second
Rise of the skeleton and
Rerobing of the naked ghost. Manhood
Spat up from the resuffered pain.
I dreamed my genesis in sweat of death, fallen
Twice in the feeding sea, grown
Stale of Adam's brine until, vision
Of new man strength, I seek the sun."
--Dylan Thomas
I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking
Through the rotating shell, strong
As motor muscle on the drill, driving
Through vision and the girdered nerve.
From limbs that had the measure of the worm, shuffled
Off from the creasing flesh, filed
Through all the irons in the grass, metal
Of suns in the man-melting night.
Heir to the scalding veins that hold love's drop, costly
A creature in my bones I
Rounded my globe of heritage, journey
In bottom gear through night-geared man.
I dreamed my genesis and died again, shrapnel
Rammed in the marching heart, hole
In the stitched wound and clotted wind, muzzled
Death on the mouth that ate the gas.
Sharp in my second death I marked the hills, harvest
Of hemlock and the blades, rust
My blood upon the tempered dead, forcing
My second struggling from the grass.
And power was contagious in my birth, second
Rise of the skeleton and
Rerobing of the naked ghost. Manhood
Spat up from the resuffered pain.
I dreamed my genesis in sweat of death, fallen
Twice in the feeding sea, grown
Stale of Adam's brine until, vision
Of new man strength, I seek the sun."
--Dylan Thomas
Thursday, January 22, 2004
"So how do the rightwingers get elected if they have nothing to say about the most important issues facing the American people? That is the central question of modern American politics. And the answer is that they work day and night to divide the American people against each other so that they end up voting against their own best interests. That is what the Republican Party is all about." --Bernie Sanders in Common Dreams [See Lakoff's Second Law.]
According to Aaron Hamburger, however, the creator of the statue of Stalin that briefly dominated the Prague skyline, Otakar Svec (1892-1955), killed himself the day before the sculpture's unveiling.
"Death Patterns
On the strings of the harp
A tracery of cobwebs glimmers
Upon the crown of the harp
A soft veil of grey dust lies."
--Angela Manalang Gloria
On the strings of the harp
A tracery of cobwebs glimmers
Upon the crown of the harp
A soft veil of grey dust lies."
--Angela Manalang Gloria
John Keel is still around.
Apparently Pynchon's appearance in "The Simpsons" is this Sunday...
"To applaud the U.S. army's capture of Saddam Hussein and therefore, in retrospect, justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disembowelling the Boston Strangler." --Arundhati Roy (via Under the Fire Star)
Apparently Pynchon's appearance in "The Simpsons" is this Sunday...
"To applaud the U.S. army's capture of Saddam Hussein and therefore, in retrospect, justify its invasion and occupation of Iraq is like deifying Jack the Ripper for disembowelling the Boston Strangler." --Arundhati Roy (via Under the Fire Star)
The seas rose; dinosaur grease gave out. For a while wars continued, smoulderingly, till it became plain they only interfered wih the present necessity, which was survival; & the world settled into a long, grim decline. There was much cursing of the time before, that had seemed such a golden age, then: the Great Wasting.
01 18 04
Listening to: B'Samim.
01 18 04
Listening to: B'Samim.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
The Hat Dictionary. (via Language Hat)
Not only is Saddam Hussein a novelist, so is Richard Perle. (via Moorish Girl)
Not only is Saddam Hussein a novelist, so is Richard Perle. (via Moorish Girl)
"ODE: Minions"
1.
I live now on a private,
Profound crystal & painful
Shatter we shall & meet fire
Coldly and I forgot the
Bells ring over the lagoon
Where sable swans on rivers yet unfound
Mirrors have been muttered, flitting the neon
Or cluster bombs or
Would renew the time he had
Crushed, is always
Blurred shadow of wires
Perfect morning, go across the mud
Of a new and pitiless faith
That shuns the jostle-avid throng.
I assert my original glory in the dark eclipse
Till peace suddenly comes:
This is strange and its consummation that wants to
2.
Heart, heart, of thousands of going
Had, six writs this would renew
The shadowy rain
Winds through the colorless chill
One torturing it worthy of saving it looked forward
The eyes of
Look, my Anopheles,
From a book on a strange shelf!
3.
Dance in forests of azure
And frozen velleity
Stone smooth to the touch
My complicated wish
Never. Dark
Turk cats vain tents it
Make you become earth/ // is destined for
Black twisted debris
Sensibly lying--I mean, the utility was there
You could
Make into ice a try
They carried no echo
With rusty invidious beaks
Ask after her like the secret
The case that such
Art is found myself wanting
Suicide Academy nominations
Shadows which are being lands
4.
One has pacified the inflexible habitations
Neighbor with information. The
Garuda of anomie
In
The
Silence of
The far away, in front
A diagram sways.
Horse drawn vintage Corvette
In the umbelliferous dark
Ink exists so it can dance for you.
Old gaming limb
Of our serious frolic
About with crumbling marvels
The ghosts, and
The devastated citadel: My galactic
Pen can dig
And the noise absorbs its own.
5.
Ash grows on a cigarette
Thinking of the secret police
With painable sparkage slag
I will come back as a mountain
Strange and round jade have to
Muck tab. Mad
Merely to lull the leisure
Our lordly despairUnder
An entelechy of clouds and trumpets,
Under pink & blue lights
Cloned soldiers erose in Decaf Land
Only after days of
A dark unknown of time, and joined to Rigel
Along the wind-curved sandhills.
The last astronaut was not a happy man,
Verulam dosser
Ghostly even to other ghosts
He vends
The promise of a new architecture;
Spends
A dense cloud of sacrifice
01 18 04
1.
I live now on a private,
Profound crystal & painful
Shatter we shall & meet fire
Coldly and I forgot the
Bells ring over the lagoon
Where sable swans on rivers yet unfound
Mirrors have been muttered, flitting the neon
Or cluster bombs or
Would renew the time he had
Crushed, is always
Blurred shadow of wires
Perfect morning, go across the mud
Of a new and pitiless faith
That shuns the jostle-avid throng.
I assert my original glory in the dark eclipse
Till peace suddenly comes:
This is strange and its consummation that wants to
2.
Heart, heart, of thousands of going
Had, six writs this would renew
The shadowy rain
Winds through the colorless chill
One torturing it worthy of saving it looked forward
The eyes of
Look, my Anopheles,
From a book on a strange shelf!
3.
Dance in forests of azure
And frozen velleity
Stone smooth to the touch
My complicated wish
Never. Dark
Turk cats vain tents it
Make you become earth/ // is destined for
Black twisted debris
Sensibly lying--I mean, the utility was there
You could
Make into ice a try
They carried no echo
With rusty invidious beaks
Ask after her like the secret
The case that such
Art is found myself wanting
Suicide Academy nominations
Shadows which are being lands
4.
One has pacified the inflexible habitations
Neighbor with information. The
Garuda of anomie
In
The
Silence of
The far away, in front
A diagram sways.
Horse drawn vintage Corvette
In the umbelliferous dark
Ink exists so it can dance for you.
Old gaming limb
Of our serious frolic
About with crumbling marvels
The ghosts, and
The devastated citadel: My galactic
Pen can dig
And the noise absorbs its own.
5.
Ash grows on a cigarette
Thinking of the secret police
With painable sparkage slag
I will come back as a mountain
Strange and round jade have to
Muck tab. Mad
Merely to lull the leisure
Our lordly despairUnder
An entelechy of clouds and trumpets,
Under pink & blue lights
Cloned soldiers erose in Decaf Land
Only after days of
A dark unknown of time, and joined to Rigel
Along the wind-curved sandhills.
The last astronaut was not a happy man,
Verulam dosser
Ghostly even to other ghosts
He vends
The promise of a new architecture;
Spends
A dense cloud of sacrifice
01 18 04
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
"Secular Muslim is my favorite way in describing me. When me and myself sit to discuss the issues of religion and culture, we never fight.
Islam is that huge heritage of architecture -- my grandfather's court yard house, music -- um kalthum and fayrooz, food -- doolma and yabsah, colors -- green palm trees and brown bricks, language -- my love letters and quraan, poems -- Sayyab and motanabbi, books Jaaberi and kanafani, smell and taste-- bakhoor and hareesa, chai -- abo el heel and noomi al basra, quraan -- mosques and harmony, and .. me :--)
Maybe that's why we can't drop that heritage or hand it over easily to other people with long beards just because they are religious and me and my self are anti-religious. I mean, where is the point? I don't believe in the Islamic religion, but I am a part of the Islamic culture and society.... the point that I am a secular person, I belong to the big seculars family, and all this crap about religions doesn't move a hair on my body (it's an Arabic expression)." --Raed
[A distinction often lost on the American media. I myself am fond of many things in Islamic culture (food, music, architecture) but i have no use for this or any other monotheism...]
Islam is that huge heritage of architecture -- my grandfather's court yard house, music -- um kalthum and fayrooz, food -- doolma and yabsah, colors -- green palm trees and brown bricks, language -- my love letters and quraan, poems -- Sayyab and motanabbi, books Jaaberi and kanafani, smell and taste-- bakhoor and hareesa, chai -- abo el heel and noomi al basra, quraan -- mosques and harmony, and .. me :--)
Maybe that's why we can't drop that heritage or hand it over easily to other people with long beards just because they are religious and me and my self are anti-religious. I mean, where is the point? I don't believe in the Islamic religion, but I am a part of the Islamic culture and society.... the point that I am a secular person, I belong to the big seculars family, and all this crap about religions doesn't move a hair on my body (it's an Arabic expression)." --Raed
[A distinction often lost on the American media. I myself am fond of many things in Islamic culture (food, music, architecture) but i have no use for this or any other monotheism...]
I found out from a "Dallas Pravda" article today that someone in Garland is still building sound equipment using vacuum tubes.
Ready for Mars? Get your Barsoom Glossary here. (He's figured out the maps, too.)
Ready for Mars? Get your Barsoom Glossary here. (He's figured out the maps, too.)
Name for a band- "Echinacea Complex".
'Goethe was the contemporary of his country's ruin.' --de Gourmont
'What happened to literature was like what happens to a decimated army: you bury the dead and make heroes of the survivors.' --ibid
Am i afraid to paint a "beautiful" painting? tell an "engrossing" story? Or to do so for the wrong reason (and what reason would i claim, that couldn't be bent into a wrong one, later?) and somehow cancel out my high, my only-meaningful ideal? ...An objective observer might well wonder in what possible danger i am, of all impossible artists the most willfully impossible, of being smoothly assi milated into the machinery of any art-process. Worry, rather, lest i succumb to an eccentric's dogged-dogma & bitter intransigence to change.
It must be that all culture is made by exiles, from somewhere else that lacked it, that didn't want it.
Don't you just love walking into a strange town with the thought to stay?
'And if only we arrange our life according to the principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the most difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.' --Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, ed/tr J J L Mood
"Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.
Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.
Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned."
--Dylan Thomas
'Goethe was the contemporary of his country's ruin.' --de Gourmont
'What happened to literature was like what happens to a decimated army: you bury the dead and make heroes of the survivors.' --ibid
Am i afraid to paint a "beautiful" painting? tell an "engrossing" story? Or to do so for the wrong reason (and what reason would i claim, that couldn't be bent into a wrong one, later?) and somehow cancel out my high, my only-meaningful ideal? ...An objective observer might well wonder in what possible danger i am, of all impossible artists the most willfully impossible, of being smoothly assi milated into the machinery of any art-process. Worry, rather, lest i succumb to an eccentric's dogged-dogma & bitter intransigence to change.
It must be that all culture is made by exiles, from somewhere else that lacked it, that didn't want it.
Don't you just love walking into a strange town with the thought to stay?
'And if only we arrange our life according to the principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the most difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.' --Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, ed/tr J J L Mood
"Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed
Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.
Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.
Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned."
--Dylan Thomas
Monday, January 19, 2004
Metafilter thread on Deep Spring College, a place i actually considered, but rejected because of the all-male thing...
"Likewise, here's the Pacheco poem (I think translated by Alastair Reid):
HIGH TREASON
I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history,
mountains
(and three or four rivers).
My "parody," quite arbitrary:
I do not love poetry. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten sonnets, certain lines,
tankas, epigrams, prose poems,
a language poem, strange, grotesque,
various poets from its history,
epics
(and three or four tanagas)."
--Haring Makata
A Collection of Tammuzi Poetry in translation (including Adonis). (via Parking Lot)
"Likewise, here's the Pacheco poem (I think translated by Alastair Reid):
HIGH TREASON
I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history,
mountains
(and three or four rivers).
My "parody," quite arbitrary:
I do not love poetry. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten sonnets, certain lines,
tankas, epigrams, prose poems,
a language poem, strange, grotesque,
various poets from its history,
epics
(and three or four tanagas)."
--Haring Makata
A Collection of Tammuzi Poetry in translation (including Adonis). (via Parking Lot)
"I can even very occasionally afford to visit where rich people go. And, you know, they don't seem to be getting seven thousand times more pleasure than me. At best, three or four times as much." --Bellona Times
Footnote to Kent Johnson.
>From: Scott Gibbons
>Subject: fyi: The art of Cultural Interference
>Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:20:47 -0600
>
>Version>04 is looking for submissions; please pass this along to anyone who
>might be interested:
>
>
>
>------------
>
>5. The art of Cultural Interference
>What is the art of rebellion? How do we interfere with monoculture and
>communicate in public space? Stickers, posters, stencils, murals, graffitti
>cut-outs, and other graphic havoc will be presented and created during the
>convergence. We are seeking work by those making creative responses and
>strategies for "Living and Rebelling in Wartime America", articulating
>"Solidarity within the Struggle for Reproductive Rights", building
>"Temporary Autonomous Zones", creating "Camouflage" and invoking "Regime
>Change at Home". Please send as many copies of your poster, sticker,
>pamphlet, stencil or other street propaganda pieces.
>
>DEADLINE for submissions March 31, 2004.
>send work to:
>Version>04 INTERFERENCE
>960 w 31st st. chicago il 60608
>contact: ed at lumpen dot com
[thanx, George]
Footnote to Kent Johnson.
>From: Scott Gibbons
>Subject: fyi: The art of Cultural Interference
>Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:20:47 -0600
>
>Version>04 is looking for submissions; please pass this along to anyone who
>might be interested:
>
>
>
>------------
>
>5. The art of Cultural Interference
>What is the art of rebellion? How do we interfere with monoculture and
>communicate in public space? Stickers, posters, stencils, murals, graffitti
>cut-outs, and other graphic havoc will be presented and created during the
>convergence. We are seeking work by those making creative responses and
>strategies for "Living and Rebelling in Wartime America", articulating
>"Solidarity within the Struggle for Reproductive Rights", building
>"Temporary Autonomous Zones", creating "Camouflage" and invoking "Regime
>Change at Home". Please send as many copies of your poster, sticker,
>pamphlet, stencil or other street propaganda pieces.
>
>DEADLINE for submissions March 31, 2004.
>send work to:
>Version>04 INTERFERENCE
>960 w 31st st. chicago il 60608
>contact: ed at lumpen dot com
[thanx, George]
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head"
Shayet-13 limn glib dogma rods
Of froglegs
Wages quests down ikon grow.
Toreadorable mild balm up going
Streak, nog, t'ward gry loup
Garou
Garuda gardyloo Ligotti rue
Night of six writs full
Spectrum dominance bogusmongers tools train
Treks man's iron scion; evil
Slaughter in the ashes axe
Turk cats vain tents it
Molds relic els, gimbaling mold do cruel he:
Muck tab. Mad
Goblin glim grip briar eat; suns cant rot
Dark id bun. Size had. Bag doll
Miming shill Marzipanopticon puree
01 18 04 (for Sister Scorpion)
Shayet-13 limn glib dogma rods
Of froglegs
Wages quests down ikon grow.
Toreadorable mild balm up going
Streak, nog, t'ward gry loup
Garou
Garuda gardyloo Ligotti rue
Night of six writs full
Spectrum dominance bogusmongers tools train
Treks man's iron scion; evil
Slaughter in the ashes axe
Turk cats vain tents it
Molds relic els, gimbaling mold do cruel he:
Muck tab. Mad
Goblin glim grip briar eat; suns cant rot
Dark id bun. Size had. Bag doll
Miming shill Marzipanopticon puree
01 18 04 (for Sister Scorpion)